Abstract
This study is an investigation of the conditions and contexts of translated fiction, especially Turkish fiction, in international publishing and literary circles. Based on current discussions on what constitutes “world literature” and interviews conducted with cultural intermediaries in the transnational publishing world, this article focuses on the factors influencing the production, circulation, and reception processes of transnational fiction in the global literary field. These factors include the process of selection in international publishing houses and the ways in which translated fiction is presented and received in the literary publishing world, such as through book reports, reviews, and awards. The case of Orhan Pamuk as an example of a “celebrity author” in the current world literature canon is discussed in comparison with the entry of another Turkish author, Hasan Ali Toptaş, into global circulation “against the odds” according to many of the criteria relevant for “world literature.” Thus, focusing on the dynamic relationship between sites of cultural production and institutionalizing, and using recent trends in the global dissemination of Turkish literature as a case study, the article draws attention to the consideration of material conditions of global literature, institutions of literature, and the necessity of interrogation of the assumptions on which “world literature” debates are based. Since the world literature canon is in the process of formation at the moment, demystifying the production, circulation, and reception processes of this formation and drawing attention to the uneven representation of literatures from the world is crucial to our understanding and the formation of a more inclusive system.
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Notes
A much different and shorter earlier version of this study was presented in Turkish at the 5th International Comparative Literature Conference in Mersin, Turkey, in 2014. For a discussion of the term “world literature,” which can be taken back to Goethe’s use of the phrase Weltliteratur, and the renewed scholarship on different understandings of the term, see the published proceedings of the Mersin presentation, Yıldız (2015). The current version of the paper is based on the presentation made at the Comparative Cultural Studies Conference, 29–31 August 2018, in Budapest, Hungary. I would like to acknowledge and thank the comments and questions of the conference participants at both conferences.
The data used in this paper were collected during a research project I carried out between January 2014 and December 2015, supported by Middle East Technical University in Ankara (BAP-08-11-2014-022). As part of the project, I attended the 2014 Frankfurt Book Fair and 2015 London and Madrid Book Fairs, where I took part in various literary, publication, and promotion activities such as author talks, panel discussions, and publishing networking events. During the research period, I also carried out semi-structured in-depth interviews with people who took part in both the production and dissemination of global literature including authors, literary agents, literary scouts, translators, editors, founders and owners of literary agencies, directors and associates of professional organizations such as the chairs of translation associations, independent publishing house founders and owners, representatives of cultural institutes promoting centers for non-majority European languages, and directors of NGOs such as the European Platform for Literary Exchange. The interviews took place in Ankara, İstanbul, Frankfurt, London, and Madrid. All the interviews were conducted by me and a total of thirty-three interviews were made. In cases where revealing the identity and/or institutional affiliation of interviewees would cause them problems, their anonymity is preserved. A complete list of the interviews is provided in the "Appendix". Each recorded interview lasted approximately between forty-five minutes to three and a half hours. The interviews were conducted in English and Turkish.
Interview conducted on 8 October 2015 in Madrid.
According to their website, “The Association of Authors’ Agents (AAA) is a British voluntary trade association whose members are all UK-based literary agencies.” http://www.agentsassoc.co.uk/ Accessed on 09.03.2019.
Interview conducted on 17 April 2015 in London.
Interview conducted on 17 April 2015 in London.
A translator and a commissioner for an independent press based in London. Interview conducted on 9 October 2015 in Madrid.
Interview conducted on 9 October 2015 in Madrid.
Interviews conducted on 5 August 2014 and 7 August 2014 in İstanbul.
Interview with Bill Swainson.
Güneli Gün translated two of Pamuk’s novels into English: The Black Book (1994) and The New Life (1997). However, the translation of The Black Book received harsh criticism from reviewers, especially in the UK. In 2006, capitalizing on his recently won Nobel Prize, Pamuk asked his publishers that The Black Book be retranslated, which led to its retranslation by Maureen Freely.
Interview conducted on 14 May 2015 in Ankara.
Interview conducted on 14 May 2015 in Ankara.
Interview conducted on 14 May 2015 in Ankara.
So far, two of Toptaş’s novels have been translated into English and published by Bloomsbury: Reckless (2016) and Shadowless (2017). Shadowless was also translated into German, French, Italian, Swedish, and Dutch.
Interview conducted on 11 October 2014 at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
See, for instance, his interview with Ángel Gurría Quintana in The Paris Review, “The Art of Fiction No. 187,” Issue 175, Fall/Winter 2005, where he connects himself with “Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Proust.” https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5587/orhan-pamuk-the-art-of-fiction-no-187-orhan-pamuk. Accessed on 23.03.2019.
For instance, see the comments of Turkish-Dutch translator Hanneke van der Heijden, “True Books.”.
Interview conducted on 7 August 2014 in İstanbul.
Interviews conducted on 5 August and 7 August 2014 in İstanbul.
For the term “otherness machine,” see Suleri, Meatless Days (1989), p. 105.
For details of the Nobel Prize winners in literature, see the following: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/. Accessed on 27.01.2016. One interesting detail, for instance, is that 2 awards have been given to Swedish writers who themselves were Academy members at the time, or in other words, prize winners who voted on their own awards. In 2018, the Nobel Prize in Literature was postponed due to sexual misconduct allegations against some members of the jury. For details, see Flood (2018) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/09/nobel-prize-judges-quit-over-handling-of-sexual-misconduct-allegations.
Here, I would like to point out that I disagree with those who criticized Pamuk’s winning the award on nationalist grounds. Also, needless to say, this study is also not interested in judging the literary quality of his works either, but rather the larger non-literary mechanisms that influence what gets to be presented as global literature, representing a rich, diversified, literary culture with reductive market-driven factors.
Interview with Hasan Ali Toptaş was conducted on 18 December 2015 at his home office in Ankara. For an English translation of parts of this interview, see Yıldız (2016).
For detailed information on the TEDA project, see http://www.tedaproject.gov.tr/EN-53638/whats-teda.html. Accessed on 23 March 2019. There are several problems related to the way the TEDA program is run, but still, it is an influential factor in the decision process of commissioning editors when they consider a text from Turkish to be translated since a TEDA grant covers the translation costs.
Both the commissioning editor who made the deal, Bill Swainson, and the co-translator of two Toptaş novels into English, John Angliss, mentioned this as an important factor influencing the process. Interview with Swainson was conducted on 11 October 2014 at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Interview with Angliss was conducted on 14 May 2015 in Ankara.
Interview with Swainson on 11 October 2014 at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
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Yıldız, H. The making of world literature: Turkish fiction as a case study. Neohelicon 46, 411–433 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-019-00502-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-019-00502-4