platypuses in translation

I'm very pleased to report that my book "The birds, the bees and the platypuses" is now available in Arabic translation thanks to the Hindawi Foundation (set up by Ahmed Hindawi), a non-profit publishing operation aiming to make the world's knowledge accessible in that language.

The steadily growing list of titles they've translated is here (in English). Details of my book are here (in Arabic). I understand the print edition costs $10, and electronic versions are also available.

This is a screenshot, as in my attempt to save the cover image from the site I lost the writing on the cover. No idea how that can happen. Also, I'm afraid the cover features an inverted helix, but I'll let this pass for once.

seven of the best

www.litprom.de, the website of an organisation supporting literature from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, has picked the 7 best titles from these areas published in German translation in 2008.

In 7th position we find my mother's latest translation work:

Sefi Atta. Sag allen, es wird gut
Übersetzt von Sigrid Groß.
Peter Hammer Verlag

Oh, and the book at the top of the list also won last year's Booker
prize.

everything good will come

Taking a break from plugging my new book, I will plug my mum's instead. She has translated "Everything good will come" by Nigerian writer Sefi Atta, and the German version should appear this month at Peter Hammer Verlag, looking like this:



For details visit www.sigridgross.com

It's a coming-of-age story set in the chaotic (and often dangerous) city of Lagos. Atta is certainly an interesting new voice in the underappreciated field of African literature.

PS I'll take this opportunity to emphasize that Peter Hammer Verlag is not a publishing company founded by a Mr Hammer. It is named thus after a tradition going back over centuries of publishing texts that were threatened by censorship under a fictional imprint, which was sometimes given as "Pierre Marteau" and sometimes as the German equivalent "Peter Hammer". The whole point of the exercise being that the person Peter Hammer did not exist. So it's both amusing and somewhat frustrating to read on booksellers websites and in reviews something like Published by Hammer, or by Hammer, Peter.

found in translation

Not many books, it appears, get translated into Arabic, or out of Arabic, for that matter. Now, the Kalima project aims to get 100 books each year translated from Western languages into Arabic by providing grants to pay for translation work and rights. I think a quarter of those books will be about science, but I don't think they'll bother with mine. In the long term, the project will also improve the success of works written in Arabic by getting them translated to other world languages.