Literary Notes: Translators campaign to be credited on book covers
Book translators are campaigning for credit on front covers, alongside the authors. In an open letter they note, “It is thanks to translators that we have access to world literatures past and present … that we are not merely isolated islands of readers and writers talking amongst ourselves, hearing only ourselves.” A translator’s skill, too, can be critical to how we experience a book.
Now there’s progress: Pan Macmillan UK says it will credit them on covers and in promotional materials for all new titles and reprints, LitHub reported.
The issue is not new; this push is. Jennifer Croft told her 10,000 Twitter followers of her resolve to translate no more books without cover credit. She translates from Polish and Spanish and is known for her work on Olga Tokarczuk’s “Flights,” which won the International Booker Prize.
For more: Publishers Weekly, on translating and publishers’ practices (tinyurl.com/OnCover); and The NYT, on Elena Ferrante translator Ann Goldstein (tinyurl.com/AnnElena).
William & Mary teacher wins for fiction: Brian Castleberry’s debut novel, “Nine Shiny Objects,” won the annual Library of Virginia award for fiction. He’s an associate professor who teaches creative writing; read more about him and his book in Wilford Kale’s piece, here: tinyurl.com/BCastleb. The awards honor Virginia writers. Other honorees: Nonfiction, Chip Jones, “The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South”; poetry, Annie Kim, “Eros, Unbroken”; art in literature, Gaylord Torrence, “Continuum: Native North American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.”
Woman to lead Farrar, Straus and Giroux: The legendary publisher has chosen its third president (and first woman president): publisher Mitzi Angel, who as an editor brought in Sally Rooney and Garth Greenwell. She takes over from Jonathan Galassi, who will be chairman and executive editor. FSG’s authors in its 75 years include Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Jamaica Kincaid, Seamus Heaney, Susan Sontag, Pablo Neruda, Wole Soyinka, Tom Wolfe and John McPhee.
Author hoax: In Spain, “The Gypsy Bride” — a thriller involving two sisters tortured to death — was a bestseller and the start of a three-book series. The author, “Carmen Mola,” won a million-euro prize. But Mola was three men; the identity was faked to sell books, not to protect the author from backlash or to preserve mental space to write. (Washington Post)
Obituary notes: Jerry Pinkney, a revered children’s book illustrator, was 81. He worked on more than 100 books, reflecting Black themes and culture wherever he could, and retold tales such as “Little Black Sambo” without the racist caricatures. (NYT: tinyurl.com/JPartist)
Correction: Last week we misstated the WWII work of Black U.S. servicemen who fathered children with Dutch women, described in a book by Chris Dickon and Mieke Kirkels. The men were not gravediggers; they likely worked in trucking and supply.
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New and recent
From Elizabeth Strout, “Oh William!” (Random House, 256 pp.) In this second Lucy Barton novel, Lucy tries to “understand her attachment to her ex-husband and what she’s gotten wrong about their relationship,” Connie Ogle writes, calling the book worth reading though not as powerful as “My Name is Lucy Barton.” Strout “brings Lucy slowly into a sharper focus, homing in on her loneliness ... and her nagging certainty that her impoverished childhood has marked her forever as an outsider.”
Also: Kati Marton, “The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel” … Jonathan Franzen, “Crossroads” ... “Renegades: Born in the USA,” reflecting discussions between Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen … Anne Perry, “A Christmas Legacy” (Nov. 2).
— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com
