Books That Travel 2024
Promoting literary translation fosters cultural exchange and enriches the global literary landscape. There are several tools to help books travel across linguistic borders. These include recognition and awards for translators and translated fiction and non-fiction books; educational initiatives that bring literary translation to schools and universities; translation grants and fellowships; book festivals, books fairs – especially those with Guest of Honour programmes – and literary events; collaborations between publishers in different countries; government-funded translation programmes; translators residencies; translators associations and initiatives; and book clubs that focus on translated literature. Perhaps you can think of a few more.
These tools can all be harnessed to help create a more inclusive and diverse literary landscape that reflects the richness of global storytelling. Promoting literary translation is a celebration of cultural diversity and an investment in fostering understanding and empathy across borders. In this spirit, we are happy to present below a selection of books translated into English from German that have recently been published. Let’s raise a glass to the translators, publishers, advocates, librarians, and all those who work in the promotion of translated literature, mining for German-language gems they can bring to a broader audience through translation into English. Prost!
Fiction
At No Time
Tasting Sunlight
Sisters in Arms
Kairos
The Inmate
Dracula Park
Jenny Erpenbeck, Kairos, translated by Michael Hofmann
Will you come to my funeral?
She looks down at her coffee cup in front of her
and says nothing.
Will you come to my funeral, he says again?
Why funeral – you’re alive, she says.
An Ordinary Youth
The Book of Commentary / Unquiet Garden of the Soul
Deep Dark Blue
Overstaying
No Storm, Just Weather
The Freedom of Emma Herwegh
Anne Weber, Epic Annette. A Heroine’s Tale, translated by Tess Lewis
Anne Beaumanoir is but one of her names.
She exists, indeed she does, not only in
these pages, but also, to be precise, in Dieulefit,
a village – ‘God-made-it’ – in south-eastern France.
Shes does not believe in God, but He no doubt believes in her.
And if He does exist, then surely He made Anne.
I was Jack Mortimer
While We Were Dreaming
Siblings
Glorious People
Without Waking Up
Star 111
Brothers
Epic Annette: A Heroine’s Tale
About People
Poetry
as mornings and mossgreen I. Step to the window
Shining Sheep: Poems
Short Stories
Animals – Eight Studies for Experts
Non-Fiction
The Visionaries
Love in a Time of Hate
In The Long Run We’re All Dead
Björn Frank, In the Long Run We’re All Dead. The Lives and Deaths of Great Economists,
translated by Jamie Bullock
On 9 June 2013, the Swedish biochemist Alf Stefan Andersson,
professor at the University of Houston, was battered to death
by his girlfriend with her stiletto heel. That’s one way for
an academic to get into the papers, I thought at the time.
But a pointless one – it was a news item, not a story,
and it certainly didn’t teach you anything about biochemistry.
Children / YA
Holly's Secret - Book 3 of The Woodwalkers
Jitterbug
Me, In Between
About
Sarah Hemens is the Project Director of New Books in German, which promotes German-language literature for translation into English in the UK, USA, and beyond.
More information about the featured book collection can be found here: german-stories.de/travel-24
