Review Books: The World Literature Weekend is at the London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, WC1, from June 19-21 | Faïza Guène

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

The Review - BOOKS
Published: 18 June 2009

Sarah Ardizzone

World of literature in Bloomsbury

SARAH Ardizzone is a middle-class, 39-year-old redhead who eavesdrops on people’s conversations and spends her time imagining she is in a gritty Parisian estate.
Ardizzone, who lives in Archway, is not a fantasist; she is a translator. Her work and friendship with the French-Algerian author Faïza Guène has taken her far from her comfort zone, to the banlieue where Guène grew up.
“The message Faïza is trying to get across is that you think you have a lid on your dreams when you’re living on the estates but go to Algeria and the lid on your dreams is round your knees,” she explains. “Sometimes you have to cheat a bit to be faithful. You’ve got to make the voice come alive. Slang has a sell-by date. By the time a book is published it’s no longer current.”
Ardizzone will discuss the tensions in French culture with Guène at the World Literature Weekend at the London Review Bookshop on Saturday. Also on the bill: Jeremy Harding chats to Lebanese author Elias Khoury; Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh talks to Esther Freud about Arab women’s role in society; Chinese author Ma Jian discusses his acclaimed novel on the Tiananmen Square massacre, Beijing Coma; Ruth Padel explores the themes of language and exile with Palestinian writer Mourid Barghouti; and Lisa Appignanesi discusses identity with Dubravka Ugrešic.
The English market for foreign translation is still tiny compared to other countries but Ardizzone believes things are slowly changing.
“There is a real barrier against the imaginations of writers and countries around the world. World literature is an ersatz, one-size-fits-all term but it’s a useful one. It’s put an umbrella over all of this and said ‘this is vastly underrepresented’. We had a famine, now there is a rekindled interest.”
SIMON WROE
• The World Literature Weekend is at the London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, WC1, from June 19-21

Comment on this article.
(You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)

Name:

Email:

Comment:

» A-Z Book titles