New Swedish Books, Spring 2020 1
New Swedish Books 12 ‘having the real life author
before you makes for an entirely different experience’ The theme of ‘Emerging Voices of Diversity’ had been chosen by SELTA members and was inspired by the recent issue of Words Without Borders focusing on new voices from Sweden, guest edited by Saskia Vogel. We settled on the idea of debut novelists under 40 – ideally writing about or from a perspective of diversity: Balsam Karam, Kayo Mpoyi, Joel Mauricio Isabel Ortiz and Adrian Perera. All four authors were under 40 and had published their first full length novel in either 2018 or 2019. As well as being young, they had diverse personal qualities including having cultural heritages from outside Sweden (including Finland, Sri Lanka, Congo, Tanzania, Colombia and Iran) and gender fluidity. Their individual Balsam Karam discussing her debut novel ‘Event Horizon’. Photo: Ian Giles backgrounds had resulted in widely varying styles, from the use of multilingual footnotes and autofiction to the retelling of African childhood stories and myths and the use of imagined peripheral spaces. Common to all was that they chose to write in Swedish. In fact, this emergence of ‘diversity’ was something that Dr Anja Tröger focused on in a presentation during the workshop – she noted that diversity of background and experience was something that had always featured in literature, and that at present it was a hot trend in exported Scandinavian writing. Part of the programme of events included a public event – Speed Bookclub. Each author was partnered with a translator and had 20 minutes to present themselves and their literary work to small groups of audience members, as well as taking questions. When the bell rang, it was time for each group to move on to the next author. This was a fun and engaging way for members of the public without any knowledge of Swedish to get to grips with these new, exciting writers! The full day of translation workshops attracted 27 participants in total. The authors were given time to talk in more depth about their work and their approaches, and there was a lot of group discussion about the themes raised. How do you accurately translate ‘kärring’? (It might be hag, old woman, bitch, or something else!) How do you depict social outcasts in translation? How can you convey pejorative, class-based views of specific foreign languages? How can you retain the inherently personal dimension of an author’s writing when it is in a different language? Joel Mauricio Isabel Ortiz looking at the different translations of an excerpt from his debut novel ’The Story of a Son’. Photo: Ian Giles