Small press authors, publishers, and translators discuss innovation in Canadian-German translation.

The BOOKfest Canada in Translation Panel features:

•Arianna Dagnino (Vancouver), author of The Afrikaner (set in South Africa)
•Ian Thomas Shaw (Frankfurt), author of Quill of the Dove (set in Middle East)
•Sonja Finck (Berlin), translator of Through the Sad Wood Our Corpses Will Hang by Ava Farmehri (set in Iran)
•Katharina Picandet (Hamburg), publisher of Through the Sad Wood Our Corpses Will Hang (German translation, Nautilus Editions)

Moderated by Margo LaPierre.
Hosted by Guernica Editions and Nautilus Editions.

The Afrikaner (Arianna Dagnino) — Zoe Du Plessis's story unfolds against the backdrop of 1996 South Africa, caught in the turmoil of the transition from the Apartheid regime to the first democratically elected black government. A paleoanthropologist at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, her world collapses when her lover and colleague, Dario Oldani, is killed during a fatal carjacking.
Clinging to her late companion's memory, Zoe sets off to the merciless Kalahari Desert to continue his fieldwork. It's the beginning of an inner journey during which Zoe comes to terms with her sense of guilt as a privileged white Afrikaner while also confronting a secret that has hung over her family for generations. During a brief visit back home, Zoe meets an unlikely lover in Kurt, a legendary South African writer with a troubled past.
The conclusion spirals the reader into a new perspective, where atonement seems to be inextricably linked to an act of creative imagination.

Quill of the Dove (Ian Thomas Shaw) — French journalist Marc Taragon is at the apex of his career in 2007. A tenacious idealist, Taragon has spent the last thirty years attempting to bring to readers the truths about the wars and political intrigues of the region. He is unsparing in his criticism of extremists and has earned many enemies. He agrees to be interviewed in Cyprus, by a young Canadian journalist, Marie Boivin, not knowing that Marie has a hidden agenda: to discover through Taragon the truth about her childhood.
Before Marie finds the answers she seeks, she is enmeshed in Taragon's plan to broker peace negotiations between a left-wing Israeli politician and a dissident Palestinian leader. Taragon succeeds in persuading the two adversaries to agree to an ambitious peace plan. The action then moves quickly through Europe and the Middle East as Taragon and his associates try to stay one step ahead of deadly opponents of their initiative.
Parallel to the main plot is the narrative of Taragon's early years as a journalist in war-torn Lebanon, his bonds to his partners in the peace initiative and Marie Boivin's tragic childhood.

Through the Sad Wood Our Corpses Will Hang (Ava Farmehri, trans. by Sonja Finck, pub. by Katharina Picandet, Nautilus Editions) — At twenty, Sheyda Porrouya's life is almost over. Born in Iran on the day staunchly orthodox mullas declare the birth of the Islamic Republic, she is witness to their purging of the country of all things Western and un-Islamic. To make matters worse, as she matures, Sheyda seems increasingly unable to distinguish between fairy tale and reality. And her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. Accused of killing her mother, Sheyda is sentenced to death by hanging. As she awaits either release or execution, the narrative jumps back and forth from Sheyda's childhood to life in one of Iran's most notorious prisons.

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