As Andrew Wylie prepares to take over the Roberto Bolano estate and sell newly “discovered” works (per the story we cited earlier), the Observer visits with New Directions editor-in-chief Barbara Epler, who first published Bolano in the US. She originally acquired BY NIGHT IN CHILE from Christopher MacLehose at Harvill Press, along with two other books–and then went on to acquire rights to all but the “major” works, Savage Detectives and the forthcoming 2666 from agent Carmen Balcells. In all New Directions controls “seven short novels, two books of short stories, an essay collection and a volume of poetry called […]
Translation
Some US Publishers Actually Buy to Translate
Motoko Rich looks at some of the “handful of American publishers who regularly seek out books to translate during the [Frankfurt Book] fair every year.” They include David Godine, Chad Post from Open Letter (based at the University of Rochester), Jill Schoolman from Archipelago Books, and Fiona McCrae at Graywolf. The publishers that look for translations do so with a clear business strategy in mind. McCrae says, “Philip Roth is not going to suddenly be published by Graywolf. So you see who is the Philip Roth of Italy or who is an interesting writer out of Sweden.” And in many […]
Italian Publisher Overspends to Bring Bestseller to US
The IHT reports on Italian publisher Baldini Castoldi Dalai’s efforts to put out an English translation of Giorgio Faletti’s 2002 book I KILL, “an Italian thriller about a serial killer on a murder spree in Monaco [that] has been translated into two dozen languages and sold five million copies worldwide.” The IHT adds, “For Italian novels, even best sellers at home, the situation is particularly difficult. A few, like Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, have managed to break through. But Susanna Tamaro’s Follow Your Heart, the biggest selling Italian postwar novel, with more than 14 million copies sold, according to its […]