BCLT held a virtual book launch on 5th November 2020 for 'The Fig Tree' by Goran Vojnović, translated by Olivia Hellewell and published by Istros Books.
THE FIG TREE has been described as ‘without question one of the best Slovenian novels in recent years’, and is a story about love and choices, freedom and family; a multigenerational saga spanning shifting historical and political landscapes, all of which impact upon the characters and their fates. Author Goran Vojnović and his translator Olivia Hellewell – our current Translator in Residence at the BCLT – discused the world of The Fig Tree, shared insights into the translation process and gave exclusive readings from the novel.
Goran Vojnović is a film director, writer and columnist. His first novel Čefurji raus! (Southern Scum Go Home!) was a bestseller and won Goran the award for best Slovenian novel of the year, which he went on to receive for his next two novels: Jugoslavija, moja dežela (Yugoslavia, My Fatherland, Istros Books 2015) and Figa (The Fig Tree, Istros Books 2020). His novels have been translated into more than twenty languages and successfully adapted for theatre and film. For the last ten years Goran Vojnović has a weekly column in one of the biggest Slovenian newspapers Dnevnik, while also writing for many other media, home and abroad. He lives and works in Ljubljana.
Olivia Hellewell is a literary translator from Slovene to English, and a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Nottingham. In addition to The Fig Tree, Olivia has translated works by Jela Krečič (Peter Owen 2016) and Dunja Jogan (Tiny Owl 2020). In 2019, she was awarded first place in Asymptote Journal's Close Approximations Translation Contest, and is the recipient of two English PEN Awards. In 2019, she led the first ever Slovene-English literary translation workshop at the British Centre for Literary Translation's Summer School, and is currently one of two Translators in Residence at the BCLT.
