Christian Kracht 

The inspirations behind Eurotrash  

This book is about my mother, who loved vodka and Phenobarbital very much. She was a horrible person but also a wonderful person. 

How I wrote Eurotrash 

I suppose I usually begin and write everything in one go until done. There are no drafts or revisions or outlines or plotting or anything like that. I guess what I wanted most was to find a humorous side to my mother´s pain and trauma, and to those decades of Swiss silence. 

The book that made me want to become a writer / made me fall in love with reading  

That one book would be Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. There was this electric shock that zapped me as a young reader: Oh. Now I understand. This is what fiction can do. I remember very well closing Le Guin’s book and feeling empty and devastated that it was over, and yearning to physically go and live in those immense beautiful worlds that she created.  

A book originally written in German that I’d recommend to English-language readers  

German author Dana Vowinckel’s debut novel Gewässer im Ziploc (forthcoming in English translation as Misophonia). This young writer has I think made German-language contemporary literature a more beautiful place, and I’m so very grateful for her book and her immense talent. 

The International Booker-nominated book everyone should read  

Anything by Austrian author Christoph Ransmayr. 

Daniel Bowles 

The inspiration and process behind the translation of Eurotrash   

Although my working process varies depending on the book and what my teaching schedule is like, I never really stop tinkering and reworking once I start. In this case, I read the novel first to get a sense of the narrative tone and the dynamic high points for pacing. Then, the first full draft took perhaps half a year, not including the many subsequent revisits. I’m a lifelong pianist, and there’s something about translation for me that resembles working with a musical score: trying to render the sound, timbre, dynamics, and formal shapes of the original into a coherent performance. With Christian Kracht, I have a tradition of meeting with him to read the translated manuscript aloud together. He’s a consummate stylist and a fantastically careful reader, so working with him is a delight. 

The book that made me fall in love with reading  

We are what we read, and I’ve read a lot of books I’d consider formative. One later example, though: I vividly recall reading W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge in high school and loving the prose style, the narrative tone, the characterisations (Elliott!). It was also a huge relief and revelation for me at the time (and still is) to witness the protagonist Larry defy social expectations and choose a loafing search for meaning over capitalist indulgence and status. That was probably the first time I consciously realised literature could be a repository of human wisdom; it was a Rilkean you-must-change-your-life experience for me. 

The book that made me want to become a translator   

More just an example of awe: I recall as a kid standing at Hawley-Cooke Booksellers (RIP) in Louisville, Kentucky, comparing the various translations of Dante’s Inferno, and being mesmerised by the different choices and challenges the translators faced and the different outcomes. Much later, when I first read Thomas Bernhard, I desperately wanted to capture his voice with my own, and then it was Thomas Meinecke’s Tomboy that finally got me into the field. 

The translator whose work I always look out for  

To name but one: John E. Woods’ translation of Arno Schmidt’s Zettel’s Traum (Bottom’s Dream) is a work of madness in the best sense. Every time I read a work in translation, though, I’m amazed by the inventiveness of the translator. 

The book I’m reading at the moment  

I’m reading Christian Kracht’s new novel Air, due out in March. Its creativity, surprises, thoughtfulness – all appeal to me deeply. I’m also reading Jennifer Croft’s translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob for its fantastical, epic scope and Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism because it’s timeless, (sadly) timely, and wise. 

A work of translated fiction originally written in German that you’d recommend to English-language readers  

Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina. Her writing opened my eyes to poetic, experimental fiction. 

The International Booker-nominated book everyone should read  

Pretty much anything Christoph Ransmayr has written is worth reading. 

Why is translated fiction so appealing to a new generation of readers?   

Surely it’s a confluence of factors, though I’m not keen to ascribe it to simple generational differences. Hopefully it stems more from abiding curiosity about the world we live in, a hunger for hearing new voices, a positive result of social media and an increasingly democratised Internet. Whatever the cause, I’m happy readers are going global.