genre fiction in translation

It's part of a whole bunch of largely excellent detective/thrillerish stuff Harvill have been publishing over the last few years: (off the top of my head, there are lots more I'm sure) Henning Mankell, Perneille Rygg, Kjell Westo, Karin Fossum, Carlo Lucarelli.

I know nothing about science fiction so I can't help in that direction. I read "The Mistress of Silence" by Jacqueline Harpman, in translation from the French. It was pretty good.

I'm not sure I have any sensible answers to your why question. Maybe the culture among Anglophone genre fiction readers feels a kind of implied difficulty to reading translated books (analogous to foreign films?) and finds that offputting? Maybe the publishers of genre fiction don't fancy stumping up the additional cost of translation before thhey know they've something saleable (literary fiction readers are likely to be more tolerant of a bumpy translation, I suspect). Those must be too-gross generalisations, mustn't they?

I think the opposite is true.

There is a Spanish thing called The Oxford Murders in a lot of 3 for 2 offers at the moment.

I am trying to think of the name of another Spanish author, but it has gone.

I think part of the reason for the lack of translated genre fiction, as Tim says, is the inferred difficulty of the foreign. Maybe also genre readers prefer their books to be rooted in the familiar - techno-thrillers must feature US politicians and/or settings, chick lit must refer to TV shows the reader will recognise, and so on?

http://www.sohopress.com/sohocrime.html

one hypothetical reason why it ought not to matter: interchangeability of books in a genre of 'genre fiction', easy translateability (how many languages is harry potter translated into already, do you suppose?), availability of large amounts of product and large markets.

(the fact of their being translated needn't be made a big deal out of.)

(not just in terms of content. think about how the magazines were the primary vector for american SF through til the 60s, and a whole lot of novels came out of reputations built through that - so, no room for anything foreign)

i have a couple french SF novels i bought in a fit of ambition. translation into french seemed pretty common.

Maybe if someone's been to the trouble of translating something they're more likely to sell it as a bit literary because it means they can increase the price on the back?

Similarly, maybe there's no point in incurring the expense of translating things which aren't very good, particularly when there does seem to be some perception among anglophones that foreign stuff is going to be hard, or clever. I'm not sure that perception exists in the other direction. It might.

anime and manga = japanese genre fiction in translation

(but there's a lot of visual stuff there that isn't translated, so...)

Italy has provided plenty of mysteries within mysteries, recently Giuseppe Genna, so that seems to be something of a local genre.

Swedish detective and crime fiction is rich and atmospheric, even though only Henning Mankell has made a full breakthrough into English translation. Many, however, are available in German translation.

Anne Holt, Norwegian, a former journalist and justice minister, has a fine series of police procedurals featuring woman police commissioner Hanne Wilhelmsen, who like the author is careful to seal away her long-time lesbian partnership from her work; as in Menkell's work there is a deep felt evolution of the central character over the course of the books.

Hakan Nesser, Swedish, made the curious choice of depicting Dutch police Commissioner Vanveetern, a world-weary cop nearing retirement, in a series of grisly puzzlers.

Kjell Westo, a Finn writing in Swedish, is much talked about for his novel "Lang," recently translated into English in the UK, about the breakdown of a famous talk show host. It's okay. I see that a subsequent book has been translated into German.

Lisa Marklund has a vivid series about a woman journalist; the first of them was translated into English as "Prime Time" and wound up on the remainder tables. Talk about counterfactual imagination: she has the assassination of a Norwegian minister take place during winter Olympic games in Sweden.

Ake Edwardson, Swedish, does an engaging series about Sweden's "youngest police commissioner" Michael Winter of Goteborg, featuring over the series Winter's gradual transformation from elegant bachelor to bemused father, as he solves cases.

Unni Lindall, Norway, does a series about Cato Isaakson, police commissioner in Oslo.

Rising above the merely generic, Per Olov enquist/Enqvist, is one of Sweden's leading novelist, combining tight plotting with history. "The Visit of the Court Physician"(my translation from German) is a novelized account of the court of mad young King Christian VII, at the time of Voltaire, and of the rise and fall of the court physician Struensee, who became the lover of the queen and the de facto regent, pursuing liberal reform until the aristocracy did him in. Enqvist does something similar for "Lewis's Voyage," an elegy for the principal supporters of the rise of evangelical christianity in Sweden.

Kerstin Ekman's "Blackwater" is more a crime novel than a detective story -- an atmospheric story of murder in the northern woods. It was translated in 1993 under that title. Ekman is one of Sweden's leading feminists and wrote a series about women in rural Sweden in the early 20th century.

Akif Pirinci, writing in German despite his family's Turkish origins, has a series about the cat-detective Francis. The whimsey of the concept is accompanied by the sardonic comments of the feline about human beings ("can-openers") and offset by grim, vivid and strongly plotted stories. A couple, at least, were translated into English; Cave Canem won a respectful review in the New York Times.

An Austrian friend says that Wolf Haas writes great stuff, but i find his short crime/detective novels too full of comic grotesque.

One of the greatest will always be the Swiss German writer Friedrich Durrenmatt, whose novel "The Pledge" served as the basis for Sean Penn's movie of the same name, featuring Jack Nicholson movie. Remarkably faithful to the novel, even though it has been transformed to a U.S. setting.

And while throwing Europeans into the mix, Spaniard Arturo Perez Reverte is a master of the thriller and of the historical novel. His highly successful five-book series about the Spanish golden age sword for hire Captain Alatriste is only now getting into English, though others, more contemporary, have long been in translation. Of them, probably "The Fencing Master" is the best historical piece (in some ways a trial for Alatriste) and "The Nautical Chart"is the best contemporary one.

I liked the one Ake Edwardson that is out in English so far, I think another one is out any day now. A lot of stuff in the finale happens "off-camera," which I guess might bother some, but I didn't really want to read another fifty pages where he sorted it all out.

After reading Laurel's recommendation here, I read White Sky, Black Ice, which was very well done, but then I bought the second one Shaman Pass and never got around to finishing it.

What about this Bitter Lemon Press?

And I get a kick out of the Erast Fandorin series by Akunin (though I'm getting increasingly pissed that they're being translated/published in English out of order, which makes for some "what's going on here" moments and pure annoyance at other times). (That's also why I've held off on the Mankell novels, 'cause I'd like to read them in some sort of logical order.) (Ditto for Sjowall.)

And I greatly enjoyed Natsuo Kirino's Out, too.

Thanks for the review - Jar City is now in my "read next" pile and the spine shall be cracked as soon as I finish the Aurelio Zen series. (Which, by the way, swings wildly from "OMG I can't believe how good this is!" to "God, this is pathetic.")

http://www.bitterlemonpress.com/

you can also check out the complete review's index--it's not all in translation, but is a start.

http://www.complete-review.com/maindex/scifi.htm
http://www.complete-review.com/maindex/mystery.htm
http://www.complete-review.com/maindex/erotica.htm

Jar City (later re-published in the UK as "Tainted Blood" for some reason)
Silence Of The Grave
Voices

They're all worth it, I think I probably enjoyed the first most, although "Voices" involves record collecting, a bit, which is always good.

One of the cofounders of Soho Press wrote a book himself, The Trudeau Vector which, based on the first chapter, seems like it might be a good story and make a good movie, but has too many sentences like this "The scientist, who was also an amateur cook, tugged on the brim of his baseball cap, leaned back in his swivel chair, tapped on his keyboard and puzzled at the numbers that appeared on the screen" (note: dramatic re-enactment, not an actual sentence) to make me want to read further.