Who's reading what?

Every Friday, René Homier-Roy, the host of Radio-Canada Montréal's morning show, does a book review. In the past four weeks, his books of the week were written by 2 UK authors, 1 French, and 1 Italian. The UK and Italian books appeared in French translation. Over the long haul, it has been very noticeable to me that his reading list does not consist just of books written in French by Québec or French-language authors.

This leads into a topic I was thinking about before the controversy over Nobel secretary Engdahl's comments on Americans' insularity. I have noticed when in France and Québec that bookstores offer, and display prominently, literature from places outside their own country. If you took a walk through a bookstore, you would notice this right away. It's a striking difference if you are also used to walking through American bookstores. The same is true if you spend any time looking at the websites of online booksellers in the U.S. and in France and Québec. They are selling, and people are buying, books by their own national authors, but also books by authors from other countries. We do not. A person could draw the conclusion that Americans are interested only in ourselves.

Wherever I go, I end up spending time in bookstores, both the major chains and independent shops. In the two French-speaking places I have been most recently, France and Québec, the visual effect of book displays hits you over the head: there's a market for books by French-language authors in the original French, but also for U.S. and British authors either in English or in translation, as well as books by Italian, Spanish, African, Israeli, Arab, Eastern European, and Latin American authors in translation. There are fewer offerings from Chinese or Japanese authors, it is true.

Many of the prominent offerings in translation are genre fiction, that is, detective novels, thrillers, sci fi and other popular works that make up most of the best seller lists in most countries. Some are also more serious literary fiction.

Since I can't walk through a French bookstore to give examples, here are some titles from fnac.fr. La fnac is a large book/video/music chain. They have brick and mortar stores and also sell online. This week's 5 top sellers:
1. XIII Mystery vol 1 a French hardback crime manga
2. French translation of World Without End by Ken Follett
3. Ou on va, papa? French, book by a father of two handicapped children
4. French translation of Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (Twilight series)
5. Paradis sur mesure French sci fi

Its list of recommended novels includes novels in the original French, but also works translated from English, Italian, Spanish, and Hebrew. Its list of new books by foreign authors includes David Lodge, Ian McEwan, Alice Sebold, Richard Russo, Kate Atkinson, a number of African authors and some each of Italian, Algerian, Spanish, Swedish, and Israeli writers. All of these are translated. http://www.fnac.fr/ and http://www.amazo.fr/ See: livres.

Some of the comments I've heard arising the Nobel controversy have been, "Those Europeans read only their own authors," and " Why did they pick an unkown writer? " Not true on the first count, and unknown to you on the second. The Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's biggest trade fair for publishers, has just finished. According to both of the recent reports below, 3% of books published in the U.S. are translations of works written internationally in other languages. 3% is pretty low compared to what you find elsewhere.

If it's any comfort, I think things are about the same in the U.K. U.K. bookstores I visited in 2005 looked a lot like U.S. ones. I bought a few French books in London, but I had to find a specialty "foreign book" shop. Books by immigrant authors have achieved prominence in Britain, but these are books originally written in English.

Translation is foreign to U.S. Publishers. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/books/18book.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss


The Best Foreign Books You've Never Heard Of a list of recommendations
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95729381