Today I received a twitter message asking me if I was going
to put together my favourite works of 2014. I did so in 2013 so I suppose the idea
is a good one and therefore a short summary of my reviews for the year was put
in place.
During the year I have reviewed seventy books, only four
being written in English, so I can possibly now claim that I’m a translated
fiction convert. The highlights of the year included being a member of the
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shadow Jury, where we came up with a
completely different shortlist and winner to the “real” Jury, joining in and
reading exclusively women’s works for Women in Translation Month, the quality
of the works I came across (seriously sifting through seventy reviews and
having to cull it was a task in itself) and of course the ongoing banter and
friendships I have made through being part of a translated fiction family.
There are always new works to discover and admire.
To do this a little differently this year I am going to post
my list backwards as the “Twelve Days of Translated Fiction Reading” for 2014
and post every second day, meaning I will finish on Christmas Day itself, with
my winner.
The book which has made it onto my “top 12” in twelfth spot
is “Ekaterini” by Marija Knezevic (translated from the Serbian by Will Firth). A work published by the Independent Istros Books, who specialise in Balkan
Fiction and a publisher whose books I have always thoroughly enjoyed.
I put this onto my favourite list for the year for a number of
simple reasons, firstly it is one of the standout “female” works I read this
year. A reimagining of the ancient Greek story of Odysseus, where the roles are
reversed and we have a modern Penelope travelling and suffering in search of
her homeland.
This work covers the usual “displacement” theme, the
imagining of a true homeland, what is your own landscape, the family structure
and the day to day struggle of survival. Our narrator is nameless and tells the
story of her grandmother Ekaterini, who spends the majority of her life in
wartime and planning to go home to Greece. We have the collapse of Yugoslavia,
the last Balkan war, the Kosovo crisis and the bombing of Belgrade, all as
asides to Ekaterini’s day to day existence raising two daughters as a single
mother.
In no way sentimental, this novel unashamedly puts men into
the shadows (as so many male novels do to women), an exploration of culture, language
and survival in an environment destroyed and moulded by men.
I did not read this as part of “Women In Translation” Month,
as I had picked it up and read it very early in 2014. To give fuel to the
limited amount of books by female writers published and reviewed, my seventy
reviews contained only twenty-two women writers (and I took part in an
exclusively female month!!!) a poor 31% of my reading dedicated to women
writers. Not defending my reading habits here, however this in part would be
due to the fact that I read two major award longlists and the female
representation there was minimal. You’ll have to read each day’s instalment of
the twelve days of translated fiction to see if another female work makes it
onto my list!!!
As Istros Books quotes on their website from my review:
A single mother raising two daughters, this is a rare gem
whereby the female characters aren’t shaped or moulded, nor put into the
shadows of their male counterparts, they are the lead here.
I'll be back on the 3rd of December with number eleven...
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