Inspiration for “Voices”

Hello, readers! This will be my first ever attempt at blogging, but I chose a topic near and dear to my heart, so let’s hope that it will be successful and even perhaps make a difference.

First things first: Did you know that only 6% of world literature is translated into English? (taken from a reliable source I swear).

However, about 13% of the world’s population speaks English (taken from an obscure internet site that you shouldn’t cite for your linguistics paper). There is a term, “anglosphere,” that has been thrown about in recent years, but its implications get tricky because it normally just includes those nations where English is the native language. Honestly, I don’t care if English is your first and only or ninth language… if you can read it, you can read it. Regardless, there are hundreds of millions of people implicated here, not to mention over 300 million of them being right here in the US of A.

As a college student, I have been a lover of foreign languages (although my time with Arabic was rather short-lived-Afwan Professor Ahmed!). And as much as I would love to, I know I can’t convince you all to start learning French in order to be exposed to more world literature. So let’s focus on English for now.

I can’t help but take note of the almost overnight cult following of Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Think you haven’t heard of him? Try The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which I’m pretty sure is sitting on one of those tables you see as soon as you walk into Barnes and Noble. It looks like Vintage Books is the publisher that took the plunge on this one in the U.S., and boy did they hit the jackpot. It is currently #1 on the NY Times paperback fiction list, and has been for the past six weeks. Oh, and the sequel to that, The Girl Who Played With Fire, is #3 on the same list, and has been there for five weeks. Not bad, not bad at all. It seems fair to say that foreign authors can definitely make it big on the English side of town, as long as they get translated and circulated.

My mission here is therefore going to be to promote foreign literature that often finds itself without a voice in English-speaking countries such as our dear America. Not only will foreign literature have a voice on this blog, it will be shouting. I will be researching popular (and not-so-popular) authors from every country imaginable whose books have thankfully been translated into English, and reviewing/discussing them as would happen in a book club. These will be highbrow, lowbrow, nobrow- all sorts of variety will be coming your way. This is where you can come in: READ THESE BOOKS WITH ME. MAKE THEM KNOWN. The point of a blog is to have a dialogue with the world at large, so please. Let’s talk.

One last thing: I also hope to research (kind of obscure) publishers that are devoted to translating and publishing contemporary foreign authors into English, as well as campaigns such as Words Without Borders that also aim to promote international literature. These are currently the people with the real power, but I’ll try to do my part with my little blog.


SUPER DUPER READING LIST FOR THE SUMMER:

Medea and Her Children, Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia)

The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection, Martin Page (France)

A Dry White Season, Andre Brink (South Africa)

This Earth of Mankind, Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Indonesia)