Author News
The Confessions of Noa Weber (Melville House) wins Translated Book Award
[Here’s another one for the “I know it’s a press release but I think you’ll actually be interested” files. Congrats to Melville House, the author, the translator, and everyone else to whom congrats are due; and a hearty cheers to Liran Golod, tireless arts champion at the Israeli Consulate, provider of this notice. – JT]
New York, March 11, 2010 – Melville House’s The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu, has won the 2010 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction. Organized by Three Percent at the University of Rochester, the Best Translated Book Award is the only prize of its kind to honor the best original works of international literature and poetry published in the U.S. over the past year. This year the awards ceremony was hosted by Manhattan independent bookstore Idlewild Books.
“We’re delighted to receive this award on behalf of the author, Gail Hareven,” said co-publisher Dennis Loy Johnson, “as it represents what we see as part of our mission at Melville House: Not just to publish both fiction and nonfiction in translation for the sake of essentially preserving it, as if it were something on the verge of going extinct. That strikes us as a way of further ensuring its obscurity. Rather, we see it as our mission to trumpet that work loudly, and to work aggressively to get that work in the hands of as many people as possible, especially those who would not normally encounter translated literature.”
The Confessions of Noa Weber is the story of a woman who leads a successful “feminist” life: she has a strong career, a wonderful daughter she raised alone, and she is a recognized and respected author. Yet her interior life is bound by her obsessive love for one man–Alek, a Russian émigré and the father of her child, who has drifted in and out of her life. Trying to understand-as well as free herself from-this lifelong obsession, Noa turns her pen on herself, and with relentless honesty dissects her life. Against the evocative setting of turbulent, modernday Israel, this examination becomes a quest to transform irrational desire into a greater, transcendent understanding of love.
The fiction judges this year were Monica Carter (Skylight Books and Salonica), Scott Esposito (Conversational Reading and Center for the Art of Translation), Susan Harris (Words Without Borders), translator Annie Janusch, Brandon Kennedy (Spoonbill & Sugartown bookstore), Bill Marx (PRI’s The World: World Books), Michael Orthofer (Complete Review), Chad W. Post (Open Letter and Three Percent) and Jeff Waxman (Seminary Co-Op and The Front Table).
For more information about The Confessions of Noa Weber, visit Melville House Books online. For more about the prize, visit Three Percent online.
Tags: Dalya Bilu, Gail Hareven, melville house, The Confessions of Noa Weber
Justin, Do you think the Israeli Consulate has any interest in publicizing this news beyond promoting good literature (which I’m sure this novel qualifies as)?
Justin, Do you think the Israeli Consulate has any interest in publicizing this news beyond promoting good literature (which I’m sure this novel qualifies as)?
No, Alan, I don’t, at least not above and beyond any country’s basic goal of championing the work of writers from that country, and in the specific case of a consulate here, of promoting art from that country in this one. Since I’m not exactly sure what–if anything–you might be getting at, I’m going to stop short of speculating, but I am going to go ahead and answer your question at some length, just so we’re all very clear on who is coming from where.
Liran’s job title–you can google her–is Director of Visual Arts and Literature at the Consulate General of Israel. That means she helps promote the work of Israeli writers in the states, facilitates the translation of Hebrew literature into English, and sometimes help get translated literature placed into magazines (cf. for example, Rebecca McKay’s translations of Shimon Adaf’s poems, in both Agriculture Reader #3 and PEN America, the journal of the PEN Foundation). She probably also does stuff for painters and filmmakers, etc., but I wouldn’t know anything about that because it’s not my world. In any case, there is somebody doing her job at probably every single foreign consulate with a US presence, as well as any number of Societies for the Promotion of ____ Culture or whatever.
She just happens to be the only one of these people whose mailing list I’m on–and that’s because she gets out of her office and comes out to events, because she is a fun person with an active interest in culture above and beyond merely doing her job–which, come to think of it, is probably what makes her so good at what she does. I met her, years ago now, either at a PEN thing, or quite possibly, at an Agriculture Reader event I helped throw at Melville House.
The press release came to me on Melville House e-letterhead; she forwarded it to me presumably because she knows I like Melville House and so thought I might be interested–which I was. It could as easily have come direct from Dennis Loy Johnson, who also has my email address, but it didn’t.
And there’s your answer. Hope it answers all your questions. Cheers.
No, Alan, I don’t, at least not above and beyond any country’s basic goal of championing the work of writers from that country, and in the specific case of a consulate here, of promoting art from that country in this one. Since I’m not exactly sure what–if anything–you might be getting at, I’m going to stop short of speculating, but I am going to go ahead and answer your question at some length, just so we’re all very clear on who is coming from where.
Liran’s job title–you can google her–is Director of Visual Arts and Literature at the Consulate General of Israel. That means she helps promote the work of Israeli writers in the states, facilitates the translation of Hebrew literature into English, and sometimes help get translated literature placed into magazines (cf. for example, Rebecca McKay’s translations of Shimon Adaf’s poems, in both Agriculture Reader #3 and PEN America, the journal of the PEN Foundation). She probably also does stuff for painters and filmmakers, etc., but I wouldn’t know anything about that because it’s not my world. In any case, there is somebody doing her job at probably every single foreign consulate with a US presence, as well as any number of Societies for the Promotion of ____ Culture or whatever.
She just happens to be the only one of these people whose mailing list I’m on–and that’s because she gets out of her office and comes out to events, because she is a fun person with an active interest in culture above and beyond merely doing her job–which, come to think of it, is probably what makes her so good at what she does. I met her, years ago now, either at a PEN thing, or quite possibly, at an Agriculture Reader event I helped throw at Melville House.
The press release came to me on Melville House e-letterhead; she forwarded it to me presumably because she knows I like Melville House and so thought I might be interested–which I was. It could as easily have come direct from Dennis Loy Johnson, who also has my email address, but it didn’t.
And there’s your answer. Hope it answers all your questions. Cheers.
[…] author Gail Haveren, translator Dayla Bilu, and everyone at Melville House. Haveren’s novel The Confessions of Noa Weber was just awarded the 2010 Translated Book Award For Fiction. categorized in Uncategorized Tags: […]
Justin, I just wanted to point out to you that when governments promote art there’s a political motive. The CIA covertly promoted American art (much of it very worthy) throughout the Cold War. So when I read your offhanded acknowledgement of an agent of the state of Israel I thought of this passage from a Naomi Klein column in The Nation last fall:
“For more than a year, Israeli diplomats have been talking openly about their new strategy to counter growing global anger at Israel’s defiance of international law. It’s no longer enough, they argue, just to invoke Sderot every time someone raises Gaza. The task is also to change the subject to more pleasant topics: film, arts, gay rights–things that underline commonalities between Israel and places like Paris, New York and Toronto. After the Gaza attack, as the protests rose, this strategy went into high gear. ‘We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits,’ Arye Mekel, deputy director-general for cultural affairs for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told the New York Times. ‘This way, you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.’”
I don’t want to be misunderstood as taking Klein’s position here. I’m against a cultural boycott of Israel. (I also don’t share her illusions in international law, but that’s another thing.) The only problem I had with this post was its source. I thought you might want to think twice about acting on behalf of a government that I understand you have serious questions about. In any case, I respect you and your writing a lot, so this wasn’t meant as an attack.
Justin, I just wanted to point out to you that when governments promote art there’s a political motive. The CIA covertly promoted American art (much of it very worthy) throughout the Cold War. So when I read your offhanded acknowledgement of an agent of the state of Israel I thought of this passage from a Naomi Klein column in The Nation last fall:
“For more than a year, Israeli diplomats have been talking openly about their new strategy to counter growing global anger at Israel’s defiance of international law. It’s no longer enough, they argue, just to invoke Sderot every time someone raises Gaza. The task is also to change the subject to more pleasant topics: film, arts, gay rights–things that underline commonalities between Israel and places like Paris, New York and Toronto. After the Gaza attack, as the protests rose, this strategy went into high gear. ‘We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits,’ Arye Mekel, deputy director-general for cultural affairs for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, told the New York Times. ‘This way, you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.’”
I don’t want to be misunderstood as taking Klein’s position here. I’m against a cultural boycott of Israel. (I also don’t share her illusions in international law, but that’s another thing.) The only problem I had with this post was its source. I thought you might want to think twice about acting on behalf of a government that I understand you have serious questions about. In any case, I respect you and your writing a lot, so this wasn’t meant as an attack.