Solvej Balle, author of On the Calculation of Volume I 

‘My book is just another time-loop story: A woman, Tara Selter, is trapped in the 18th of November. In a way, I didn’t want to tell this story. I got the idea in 1987 – it probably sprang from some reflections about time after writing my first book, mixed with what I was reading at the time – but the more I thought about it, the more foolish the idea seemed to me, even more so after the Hollywood comedy Groundhog Day came out. I tried to get rid of the idea, but it kept coming back, so in the end I realised that the only way out was to write it.’

Barbara J. Haveland, translator of On the Calculation of Volume I

‘Solvej Balle’s work is an inspiration in itself. It’s spare and taut. There’s nothing superfluous here, nothing random. Every word is weighed, every phrase and sentence finely honed. The challenge for the translator is to produce a faithful and felicitous rendering in English of her distilled prose. As soon as I read the first book in the On the Calculation of Volume septology, I knew I had to translate it – and, happily, Solvej also wanted me to do it.’ 

Vincent Delecroix, author of Small Boat

‘My purpose was neither to formulate a moral judgement nor to just express loud and easy indignation. On the contrary, it was to suspend all moral judgement, and, by writing an imaginary character, to simply try to penetrate a consciousness that could belong to anyone. What does it mean to be a spectator of the wreckage, as we all are? How can anyone slip from a common and ordinary behaviour to a calm inhuman position? These were the questions I wanted to raise, faced with a brutal and dreadful situation. I was sure that readers would experience a deep discomfort, maybe even a moral shock.’ 

Helen Stevenson, translator of Small Boat

‘We’re all so accustomed to reading news pieces about the migrant crossings, we have a way of reading them without really reading. Here was a fictional text that forced the reader to slow down. It raises painful questions about responsibility, about looking away. I remembered reading the news coverage, and seeing a documentary called The Crossing, in which a survivor of the sinking talked about that night – I rewatched it while I was translating. I was really struck by a phrase I read in This Tilting World by Colette Fellous – that the word translate literally means to ferry across.’ 

Hiromi Kawakami, author of Under the Eye of the Big Bird

‘What made me decide to write this book was the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March 2011. That was a moment when we were confronted by the fact that humanity is no longer able to control the technologies we have created. 

It wasn’t until about three years later that I was able to start writing the book. Between being inspired to write a story and actually starting to write, I need time to think. This one in particular needed more of that time.’  

Asa Yoneda, translator of Under the Eye of the Big Bird

‘It’s taken the better part of a decade for this book to come out in English. Our world has definitely changed in the meantime, but as much as I wish it could have happened differently, I also wonder whether this hasn’t turned out to be the right time for anglophone readers after all; in this story, 10 years is but the turn of a page.’

Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection 

‘I had tried for years to find a way to tell a story set at the intersection between our physical and our digital lives – how the two shape each other and our inner horizon. But it never worked – there is something about the way time spent online vanishes that seemed to resist any linear plot. When I finished, at first, I was a bit dispirited. It is a short novel without real characters, without dialogue, with no explicit plot and almost completely made of descriptions. When I sent the draft to my agent, I apologised profusely. I still read that email from time to time and have a laugh.’ 

Sophie Hughes, translator of Perfection 

‘I’m always slow, but this short book took me a particularly long time to finish, in part because I had a baby, but also, I think, because it is my first published translation from Italian, so I was particularly dithering and tinkering, in a way that I no longer am with Spanish. I liked working with Vincenzo because he cares about the smallest details, knowing from experience that over the length of an entire novel, making these seemingly inconsequential changes is actually the most important part of the process of reconstructing style in another language. Biggest challenge? I’ve never been to Berlin. But Douglas Adams never went to space.’

Banu Mushtaq, author of Heart Lamp

‘My stories are about women – how religion, society, and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates. The daily incidents reported in the media and the personal experiences I have endured have been my inspiration. The pain, suffering, and helpless lives of these women create a deep emotional response within me. I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study.’  

Deepa Bhasthi, translator of Heart Lamp

‘For me, translation is an instinctive practice, and each book demands a completely different process. With Banu’s stories, I first read all the fiction she had published before I narrowed it down to the ones that are in Heart Lamp. I was lucky to have a free hand in choosing what stories I wanted to work with, and Banu did not interfere with the organised chaotic way I went about it.’

Anne Serre, author of A Leopard-Skin Hat

‘I wrote the book after the suicide of my younger sister, at the age of 43, with whom I had an intense bond. I wanted to create a memorial to her, one that was as beautiful as possible. My sister died in March, and I see from my notebooks that I finished the book in September. That was because the work had already been done, in a way. All through the preceding years, I had been observing her, talking with her, thinking about her misfortune, and wondering to what extent I was partly responsible for it. The book came pouring out, as if fully formed.’ 

Mark Hutchinson, translator of A Leopard-Skin Hat 

‘Anne is a close friend of mine, so I read all of her books as they first appear, in French. When I’m translating, I do a quick mot-à-mot of the whole thing, and then work it up from there – the whole book each time, over and over, until I have an accurate English facsimile of the French. Once everything is in place, I do what I call the varnishing – that is, I go back over it as many times as is necessary, sentence by sentence, listening to it as a piece of English, buffing and polishing and gathering up any slack.’