Bloody Foreigners
The
best crime fiction in translation
Oxford
29 March 2006
Sue Neale
This book tour organised by Serpent's Tail, Bitter
Lemon Press and Arcadia Books was created in response to the changes
made last autumn by the Crime Writers Association to their Gold Dagger
Award. They decided to make crime fiction in translation ineligible
for the award, just Anglophone novels. However they acknowledged
that crime fiction in translation is important by creating a new
award for the best crime fiction in translation. The winner will
receive £5000 and the
translator £1000 indicating the significant contribution they
make.
The tour is making tracks across the UK starting in London and travelling
to Oxford, Chelmsford, Bristol, Liverpool, Newcastle and Norwich.
The Oxford event was one of the final events of
the Oxford Literary Festival which celebrated its 10 th anniversary
with a wonderful array of writers in the magnificent surroundings
of Christ Church College. Three writers – Didier Daeninckx, Leonardo Padura and Louis Sanders – and
two translators – Liz Heron and Peter Bush - came together under
the watchful eye of Val McDermid to read small extracts of their
work in French and Spanish. The translators then read the same extract
in English. Louis Sanders read his own work in the English translation.
Val McDermid, a well-known British crime writer,
introduced all three writers and suggested that for both writers
and readers it is important to be able to experience crime fiction
in translation. At conferences abroad she has often met writers who
know her work but she cannot return the compliment as she is unable
to read it in the original. She laid the blame on the slowness of
publishers to wake up to the quality of foreign writing. This has
changed in the last five years particularly as three winners of the
CWA Gold Dagger have been translated – Arnaldur
Indridason (Icelandic), Jose Carlos Samoza (Spanish) and Henning
Mankell (Swedish). Other short listed authors for the CWA award have
included Russian, French and Cuban writers. She challenged Boyd Tonkin's
comparison with Premiership football and foreigners coming over here
to show us how to do it. She suggested that the difference feeds
and fertilises our local game and makes our practitioners stronger
rather than elbowing them out. She suggested that crime fiction is
an obvious route for accessible translation as human behaviour is
universal in this respect regardless of societal conventions. At
its best, it tells us who we are. In addition it does it in an apparently
infinite number of styles and voices form the cop to the killer,
with every shade of grey in between. Crime fiction is social history;
firmly rooted in time and place. It explains the realities more vividly
than non-fiction or journalism can. Val said that whenever she travels
to somewhere new she finds a crime novel to give her a true sense
of the realities of life there. With Daeninckx, Padura and Sanders
demonstrate the quality of what is now available. (Thanks to Val
McDermid for access to her notes for this text.)
Val asked all the authors to explain why they chose the crime fiction
genre.
Didier suggested that it personal
experiences such as the death of the friend of his mother during
a demonstration in 1962 that impelled him to write fiction that deals
with the hidden histories of individuals. In addition to remain silent
would be to be guilty of covering up the truth. For Louis it was
different, living in the Dordogne which is overrun with Brits looking
for a new life that somehow is a recreation of how they remember
the fifties. However this is juxtaposed to the rural life that is
dying in France and this is where the conflict lies. is aim is to
write crime fiction that is fun but does not have any greater import.
Leonardo lives and works in Cuba and it was only after changes in
the eighties that he felt able to write crime fiction that criticises
those in power. He takes a risk by doing this but it is one that
he perceives as necessary.
