I never blog! Slime, ants, and The Blacksmith's Daughter.

Hello!

I never blog. Maybe I should. Here’s a quick update.

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  • I recently finished working on my translation of Slime by Susanne Wedlich. The original was published as Das Buch vom Schleim by Matthes & Seitz as part of their Naturkunden series and the English translation will be published by Granta in 2022. It looks at slime in all its facets: as a social phenomenon, taking in horror and play; as an essential element of the natural world, looking at slugs, plants, and the human body; and as a component of our environment crucial for delaying climate change. It’s been just under two weeks since I submitted the manuscript and I am suffering serious slime withdrawal. I’ve started reading a book on taxidermy to get my fix of gruesomeness and when I’m not doing that, I watch documentaries about the creatures of the deep sea. I’d highly recommend following Susanne Wedlich on Twitter; she shares some fascinating stuff (including gifs of nudibranches).

  • Katy Derbyshire and I also recently finished working on our translation of the first book in Selim Özdoğan’s Anatolian Blues trilogy, The Blacksmith’s Daughter which will be published next spring by V&Q Books. We love this book so much! I can’t wait to be able to share it with people. It’s the story of a girl and her father growing up in 1950s Turkey and the next two books in the trilogy follow her life as she moves to Germany as part of the Gastarbeiter generation. Katy has written about the book here and I won’t add anything for now, other than to say that we have huge affection for the book and working on it together has been an absolute joy.

  • Earlier this year I submitted my translation of Empire of Ants by Susanne Foitzik & Olaf Fritsche which will be published by The Experiment Publishing in spring 2021. Great fun to translate and I found myself looking again at the ants on my allotment. It did make it all the harder to plough through their nests when creating my veg beds, though.

That’s all, folks!