This month on the Reading group we’re going to look at books in translation. We’ve had a reader request todo so – and it seems apt, after the excitement surrounding The Vegetarian and its success at the Man Booker International, not to mention the current boom in translated fiction.
The fact that translated fiction now accounts for 7% of sales in the UK market is a welcome change. It feels like a long time since I wrote an article lamenting the lack of traction that foreign fiction had in the UK. If I were to attempt a similar provocation now, I might be tempted to suggest things are heating up too much. Every other book that publishers send me for review at the moment seems to be translated. On the one hand, this stream of books makes me worry about the thoughtless following of fashion and the many-limbed, no-headed mass of the mainstream publishing industry. On the other hand, it’s a heck of a lot better than books on mindfulness or beating titles like The Man Who Caught the Smugsmug Train to Cozylandia.
The fact that publishers are pumping out so much new translated fiction also means that there is a great wealth of books for us to choose from. More than ever, and quite possibly better than ever. (Although let’s see about that when the nominations start coming in.)
This time, we’ll return to the old Reading group tradition of letting the hat decide. All you have to do to get a book into contention is to name it in the comments below. I’ll print out each separate nomination (meaning popular books have better odds of being picked - but there are no guarantees). And then I’ll pick one from a suitably jaunty chapeau.
