|
|
Dear friends,
Deep Vellum plays the long game. Publishing great literature in translation takes time. And while we’re usually content to let projects develop at their own pace before we start playing the town crier, we can’t wait any longer to announce that several major translation projects are well underway. Prepare, dear readers, for a great Babylonian tower of must-read tomes!
With the groundbreaking success of Mircea Cărtărescu’s SOLENOID—a “towering work” (Dustin Illingworth, New York Times)—Miquel de Palol’s THE GARDEN OF SEVEN TWILIGHTS—“equal parts unwieldy and extraordinary” (Ben Hooyman, Los Angeles Review of Books)—and Luis Goytisolo’s ANTAGONY—“brilliant…daring” (Colm Tóibín, New York Review of Books)—Deep Vellum, together with the rejuvenated Dalkey Archive Press that merged with Deep Vellum in 2021, has demonstrated its affection for daring work of astonishing literary ambition. In the span of mere months, we published two groundbreaking novels written by living legends and annual Nobel contenders. But those books merely set the stage for what’s in store for 2025 and 2026 (and beyond!): the publication of translated works more ambitious than any that have been published by more traditional houses in decades past.
| |
Starting in 2024, Max Lawton (pictured) will share his vision and talent with Deep Vellum to translate, edit, and shepherd into English some of the world’s most exciting fiction and to cement the press’ reputation as the champion of maximalist literature in the Anglosphere––of the badass avant-garde masterpieces that would otherwise not be translated or published.
These masterpieces have come to Deep Vellum and to Lawton thanks to Andrei, a friend of the press and the founding steward of The Untranslated blog, the seminal reference for great books not yet available to English-speaking audiences. Andrei, a Russian-speaking book blogger from Eastern Europe, launched The Untranslated in 2013. He has described the idea for the blog as having come from reading Gravity’s Rainbow as an undergrad and wondering if there were similar works in other languages. As a PhD student of comparative literature, he became fascinated by the short reviews of untranslated books in the magazine World Literature Today––by the idea that you could tell the world about a book before it was translated. Andrei therefore dedicated his blog to reviewing significant literary works unavailable in English translation. Last year, he celebrated the 10th anniversary of The Untranslated, the ultimate Anglophone source for reviews of innovative literary works written in or translated into the eight languages other than English that Andrei can read. Deep Vellum owes a debt of gratitude to Andrei for discovering and championing all of these books; he was also instrumental in encouraging Lawton to undertake their translations.
| |
| Available for Pre-Order Now
| |
This new era begins with a book like no other: SCHATTENFROH by Michael Lentz, translated by Lawton, edited by Matthias Friedrich, a renowned translator of Nordic and Catalan literature into German, and scheduled for publication in 2025. Peerlessly strange and rich, dense with references and homage, equal parts Hieronymous Bosch and Alejandro Jodorowsky, Lentz’s novel begins with a writer named Nobody composing the book we’re reading in his mind, which is also a panopticon ruled by his father. The writer leads the reader through realms of history and art, of horror and pain, and of personal reckoning with his father, the titular Schattenfroh. What if a schizophrenic municipal employee in provincial Germany attempted to write his own Bible? You’d get something like SCHATTENFROH. As Andrei puts it: SCHATTENFROH is a “baroque and surrealist explosion of a novel [that] belongs to the pantheon of the best works of world literature published in the past two decades.”
| |
Although some of Antonio Moresco’s work has already reached English readers (DISTANT LIGHT, published by Archipelago, and CLANDESTINITY, published by Deep Vellum—both translated by Richard Dixon), these works barely hint at the scale of the Italian author’s significance or the stylistic range flexed through the course of the GAMES OF ETERNITY trilogy, his magnum opus. The publication of Lawton’s translation of THE BEGINNINGS, the first book in the trilogy––slated for 2026––seeks to remedy that. A pellucidly meditative and surreal vision of Italy in the 1960s and ‘70s that tracks the autofictional narrator’s journey to becoming a writer after his time spent as a monk and a revolutionary, THE BEGINNINGS will prompt a well-deserved critical recognition of Moresco as one of the world’s foremost literary lights and will be followed by Lawton’s translations of the trilogy’s second and third volumes––SONGS OF CHAOS and THE UNCREATED ONES––in subsequent years. Moresco’s trilogy is currently being released to great acclaim in Spanish by Impedimenta (also Cărtărescu’s Spanish publisher) and in French by Éditions Verdier.
All of Max’s translations from Italian will be edited by the great writer and translator Francesco Pacifico.
| |
Lawton will also be editing Douglas Suttle’s translation from Catalan of Miquel de Palol’s TROIACORD, a bizarro epic comprising five volumes and over 1300 pages, defying description and sorely testing the capacities of any printer we send it to. A knot of plot-threads, a puzzle of mythology and physics, Palol’s totemic masterwork is—and again, we turn to our beloved Andrei of The Untranslated for context—"the first great novel of the 21st century." A few of the seminal titles that deserve mention alongside Palol’s opus: GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, DHALGREN, INFINITE JEST. Readers can expect the first installment of this novel, split up into three volumes, to appear in early 2027. In this endeavor, Deep Vellum joins Zulma, a French publisher that has been working to bring Palol to the Francophone world for the last few years; they have already begun releasing the TROIACORD split up into three volumes.
Another massive book that Max is going to translate should be announced in the next few weeks… Stay tuned and expect a heady maritime stench!
| |
All this to say: over the next few years, Deep Vellum will continue to publish the sort of ambitious work that almost never finds a home in traditional publishing. Lawton, already lauded for his translations of Vladimir Sorokin (of which many more are forthcoming from Dalkey Archive), is one of the most exciting translators and writers working today. His passionate advocacy for these projects harmonizes with Deep Vellum’s mission to celebrate work so often overlooked in mainstream publishing—works that, when they are published with care and attentiveness, are so often responsible for tectonic shifts in culture at large.
With SOLENOID, THE GARDEN OF SEVEN TWILIGHTS, Luis Goytisolo’s ANTAGONY, and the recent reissue of Marguerite Young’s legendary MISS MACINTOSH, MY DARLING, Deep Vellum—together with Dalkey Archive under one roof—has become the preeminent independent publisher of international literature, voluminous greats, literary behemoths to shape the future of reading and writing through the 21st century.
As this new era dawns, we encourage you to fortify your bookshelves, call your opticians, strap on your wrist braces, stock up on snacks, hydrate, stretch—and prepare for an unprecedented wave of literature in translation. We are grateful to you for joining us on this journey; we can’t wait to share these books with you.
Weightily,
Your friends at Deep Vellum
| |
Deep Vellum is a nonprofit for exactly this reason: so we can take on the big, challenging, important books that others won't touch. Your support makes ambitious projects like these possible! Thank you to our donors—past, present, and future.
| |
|
|
|
|
