Writing a third novel in a trilogy is always problematic for the author. Will the new novel hit the heights of the previous two, will it dip and fizzle out in the opinion of the readers? Endings are after all more memorable than beginnings.
In late September the taxi I was travelling in got stuck in traffic on Putney Bridge. It was the third traffic jam I had experienced within a week. As the vehicle inched across Putney Bridge, the sky cloudless and pale blue, the strong early Autumn sunlight playing on the surface of the river Thames, I sought comfort from this latest, if inconvenient, sign of London’s ongoing recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Young Adult fiction is an oddity, a jumble of genres sitting awkwardly on the same shelf. From fantasy to historical, scifi to commercial fiction, LGBT+ romance to gritty social realism (and more), it’s nominally written for 13 to 18 year olds, with a small number of titles qualifying as ‘crossover’; that is, appealing to both adult and teenage readers. But studies indicate that over half of YA readers are adults, with women making up the majority of readers.
Since I first heard about my great Uncle Madan Lal Dhingra whist at boarding school in England. My sister stopped me in the school corridor, told me she had just read about him in a magazine called ‘famous murderers’ and that he was ‘Daddy’s Uncle’.
The following year, aged 13, I was sent to school in South India and told he was a great patriot who had given his life so that India could be free and we could regain our self-respect. That we must never forget.
Since the beginning of the Corona pandemic crisis, we have barely talked about African migrants who still die, trying to cross the Mediterranean aboard inflatable boats. All far on the horizon, pink birds fly free over the waters. With her tired voice, Miss UNHCR says: “Just for the year 2021, about 315 people died in Mediterranean Sea.” She walks through warm sand, a bright sun. she keeps her gaze down. The reality is too bright to watch with bare eyes.
In the Company of Men is based on the 2014 Ebola epidemic that took place in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in 2014. To tell the story of this devastating event, I chose to intertwine songs, legends, poems, and other genres like testimonies and documentary prose. Non-human characters (animals and trees) interact with human characters in the style of a contemporary fable.
What makes a European woman in her sixties, old enough to be the writer’s grandmother, the right translator for a young, gay, Cameroonian-Swiss author? I had to do some soul-searching before agreeing to take on this project.
My novel, Jaipur Journals, (to be published in the U.K. by HopeRoad on April 29th), is set around a literature festival. Not just any litfest, but the Jaipur Literature Festival which I co-founded, and direct, with Willian Dalrymple. Our 14th edition, virtual this year, goes live from 19th to 28th February.
In March 2021 we will publish In the Company of Men, a novel by Véronique Tadjo which describes the Ebola epidemic in an unnamed African country. Initially, I found the title puzzling, until I discovered the phrase in one of the stories and understood its significance. The title unlocks a key feature of the book, which is to stress how all the elements of the epidemic – humans, animals, trees, rivers and birds – are equally important.
I was delighted when my translation of White Horse, by Chinese writer Yan Ge, made it onto the short-list of Warwick Women in Translation 2020. It was in serious company: Tove Jansson and Natalia Ginzburg were also on the short-list, chosen from 132 entries in 34 languages, but White Horse is a book that can hold its own. As the judges said, ‘[This novella] portrays adolescence as heartachingly-recognizable the world over. Translated with charm and wit by the outstanding Nicky Harman.’
