Posts featuring Jean-Baptiste Andréa

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

April 26, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Kathryn Raver, and Wambua Muindi

The latest in literary updates from Kenya, France, and the United States!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us around the world for book launches, book fairs, and literary prizes! From a former Police Commandant’s memoir in Kenya, to a “harrowing” new release in France, to a mobile poetry reading in New York City, read on to learn more!

Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Kenya

On Saturday, April 6, Qwani launched Qwani 02 at Alliance Française Nairobi. Qwani, founded by Keith Ang’ana, is a youth initiative meant to promote literature among young writers and readers, and whose main annual event is the book launch. The launch also featured music performances and selected readings from the works that made the second project. The one-of-a-kind anthology is multilingual and features 72 stories from some 60 enthusiastic Kenyan young writers. Ranging from short stories to essays to poetry, the included pieces demonstrated some innovative skills in storytelling and writing. The event culminated in book signings, a cake cutting, and a speech cameo by Lexa Lubanga who highlighted the recent kickoff to the fifth edition of the Kenyan Readathon.

In other news, Omar Abdi Shurie, former Commandant of Administration Police Training College in Kenya, launched his memoir Beyond the Call of Duty at the Embakasi AP Training Centre on Thursday, April 18. His book continues a Kenyan tradition of men in uniform documenting their lives and bequeathing literary history with an archive of service in the disciplined forces. With a 45-year stint in Kenya’s law enforcement, Shurie offers a rare view into matters of security for a police unit that is—to the public mind—known for its corruption and brutality. The former Commandant documents a life that exemplifies the Kenyan dream; hailing from Mandera in marginal North Eastern Kenya, Shurie ultimately rose to head the police service, working to maintain law and order by providing leadership for law enforcement. This is what Shurie’s life story personified, and what his book represents—a Kenya that is still becoming.

Kathryn Raver, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from France

Two weeks ago, over 100,000 people flocked to Paris for the third annual Festival du Livre de Paris. The festival hosted these crowds alongside hundreds of authors from around the world for three days of industry discussion and literary celebration. In the spirit of the upcoming Summer Olympics, there was even a “Grande Dictée des Jeux,” where over 2700 “spelling athletes” competed to transcribe a series of spoken texts in exchange for a medal and free entry to the festival. 

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The Beauty of the Original: Sam Taylor on Translating Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s A Hundred Million Years and a Day

July 23, 2020  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Barbara Halla

. . . it’s always a special pleasure to translate someone who writes perfect sentences, which I think is the case with Jean-Baptiste.

The questions and ideas that Jean-Baptiste Andrea tackles in his lauded novel, A Hundred Million Years and a Day, beautifully inform the wisdom that all searches for truth are equally intrinsic as they are extrinsic. As our Book Club selection for the month of June, the work delves into psychological complexities with erudition and poetry. A Hundred Million Years and a Day is translated into English by the award-winning author and translator, Sam Taylor, who graciously spoke to our assistant editor, Barbara Halla, about his process and methods.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page! 

Barbara Halla (BH): While reading A Hundred Million Years and a Day, I was reminded of another recent translation of yours: Hubert Mingarelli’s Four Soldiers. In both books, unlikely friendships develop under strenuous circumstances, and there is a certain reverence for the small interactions that make human connection possible. To the extent that you are able to pick which books you translate, do you find yourself drawn to specific themes?

Sam Taylor (ST): I hadn’t thought about that connection, but you’re right: there are similarities there. Both authors also share a very simple, controlled, vivid prose style that makes you feel as though you’re inside the minds and bodies of the characters. More generally, I’ve also translated quite a few books set in or referencing World War Two. However, this isn’t down to a conscious choice on my part. In fact, it probably has more to do with publishers ‘typecasting’ me to some extent. Thankfully, I’ve translated enough very different authors and books that it’s not really a problem. What I enjoy is the variety that comes with translation, rather than constantly being drawn to the same themes. On the other hand, it’s always a special pleasure to translate someone who writes perfect sentences, which I think is the case with Jean-Baptiste.

BH: How different is it to translate a book like this one from, say, Laurent Binet’s The 7th Function of Language? Do you conduct any substantial research before translating texts that rely heavily on a specific type of knowledge, be it palaeontology or semiotics?

ST: No, I think that kind of in-depth research is the author’s prerogative. When I wrote a novel set in Renaissance Italy, I spent a whole year researching it (including a two-week trip around Italy), but I don’t have that kind of luxury—in terms of time or money—when it comes to translations because I regularly translate between six and twelve books/screenplays every year. Some ‘research’ is needed for books with specialist vocabulary (as with this novel) and/or lots of quotes and references (e.g. for The 7th Function), but I do it online as I’m translating the book; I don’t read through lots of reference works beforehand. READ MORE…

Announcing our June Book Club Selection: A Hundred Million Years and a Day by Jean-Baptiste Andrea

June 29, 2020  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Barbara Halla

It’s a humbling, bittersweet experience, a beauty so terrible that you can’t quite bear to be in its presence for too long.

With expansive beauty and imaginative observance, Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s A Hundred Million Years and a Day has swept up a enormous amount of praise in its homeland of France, including being shortlisted for the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie française and the Prix Joseph Kessel, and we are now proud to present it to our readers as our Book Club selection for the month of June. Andrea’s story of a man’s hunt for lost creatures pays equal tribute to the earth’s natural wonders and to human persistence and urge for discovery, culminating in a majestic and magnetic tale of what happens when the personal meets the eternal. Within its pages lies a thrilling poetry.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page! 

A Hundred Million Years and a Day by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, translated from the French by Sam Taylor, Gallic Books, 2020

Stan, a middling French palaeontologist, is convinced that the skeleton of a “dragon” hides in the belly of the mountains that delineate the porous border between France and Italy. He heard about this dragon years ago, in a second-hand summary of the ramblings of a sour Italian man—the seemingly outlandish contents of someone’s childhood memories. Haunted by this skeleton, Stan drops everything in its pursuit: he quits his university job as a professor, sells his Parisian apartment, and self-finances an expensive expedition to these majestic mountains in the company of his former assistant Umberto, Umberto’s own mentee Paul, and Gio, a taciturn guide for whom the mountains are a second home. 

Of course, being a scientist, what Stan is looking for is not really a dragon. From the vague details he has heard, he surmises that the skeleton the caretaker had come across in fact belonged to a brontosaurus—a species that palaeontologists had agreed on being nonexistent, being simply a variation on the apatosaurus. While the book establishes early the love that Stan has for his discipline, for the fossils that he used to meticulously collect and treat as his friends during his lonely childhood spent in another set of mountains, the motives behind this expedition are not necessarily pure. For Stan, having lain forgotten, himself collecting dust in a basement office, this expedition presents his last chance at some glory. If he does find his brontosaurus, proving a theory disputed by palaeontologists for almost a century, the creature will bear his name, articles will be written about Stan, the “animal will give him back his voice.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

March 9, 2018  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Barbara Halla, Erik Noonan, and Theophilus Kwek

Our weekly roundup of the world's literary news brings us to France, Singapore, and the United States.

It’s Friday, which means it is time to catch up on the literary news from around the world, brought to you by our fabulous Asymptote team! This week, we highlight France, Singapore, and the United States. 

Barbara Halla, Editor-at-Large, reporting from France:

As previewed in our January dispatch, Paris is getting ready to host its annual Book Fair, starting March 16. The spotlight this year will be on contemporary Russian literature, with thirty-eight guests including Olga Slavnikova, Vladimir Charov, and Alexandre Sneguirev—all previous winners of the Russian Booker Prize. But even before the fair opens its literal doors, another event is organized in Southern France to satisfy those readers that can’t make it to Paris. Bron, a commune of Lyon, will hold its first Book Festival, dedicated entirely to contemporary fiction, between March 7 and 11. The festival celebrates those French authors who showcase the heterogeneous nature of the novel itself, with a spotlight on the works of Jean-Baptiste Andréa, Delphine Coulin, Pierre Ducrozet, Thomas Gunzig, and Monica Sabolo.

March is also Women’s History Month and French publishers have joined in the effort to promote literature by women and on women. Folio, a Gallimard imprint, has launched its “Femmes Prodigieuses” (“Brilliant Women”—a play on Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend”) campaign on social media, urging readers to read and share the works of their favourite women authors. Folio’s own suggested reading list include classics and contemporary authors, from Virginia Woolf to Marie NDiaye and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Beyond just the campaign, publishers are celebrating Women’s History Month by simply publishing more women. Simone de Beauvoir’s memoir “L’age de discrétion” (“The Age of Discretion”), analysing womanhood at sixty and beyond, will be published for the first time as a standalone book. Albin Michel, another major publisher, will publish Susan Rubin Suleiman’s “La question Némirovsky,” a biography of Irène Némirovsky, of “Suite Française” fame, to paint a portrait of a great, and yet forgotten, author.

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