Results of the 2019 Burgess grant
As you know, the Book office loves when French books are translated into English, so we are very proud to announce the list of books selected to receive this year's Burgess Grant! This programme, launched in 1993, aims at supporting UK-based publishers who include translations from the French. Here is the list of the 14 books we will support the translation of with our 2019 Burgess grant:
Ça raconte Sarah (Les éditions de Minuit) will be published by Harvill Secker. Written in 2018, this novel is Pauline Delabroy-Allard’s first published literary piece. It was nominated for the 2018 edition of the Prix Médicis. It tells the story of a young, mysterious woman.
Couleurs de l’incendie, a novel by Pierre Lemaitre (Albin Michel), published by MacLehose. It tells the story of a woman taking over her diseased father’s financial empire in France in the late 1920s. It is the second opus of Lemaitre’s trilogy, which follows the Goncourt prize winning Au revoir là-haut.
L’art de perdre (Flammarion), Alice Zeniter’s novel, will be published by Picador. Set in France, this novel tells the story of a young girl retracing her family’s past in Algeria, and received the 2017 Prix Goncourt des lycéens.
Pièces détachées (Gallimard) by Colette Fellous, will be translated by Les Fugitives. In her novel, she tells about her life between Tunisia and Normandy, between two conflicting parts of her life.
La petite fille sur la banquise (Grasset) by Adelaïde Bon, will also be published by MacLehose. In this autobiographic novel, Adelaïde Bon therapeutically writes about being a victim of sexual abuse when she was only nine years old. She tells about the processes that finally brought her and 18 other women to face the serial rapist who destroyed their lives at the Paris court in 2016.
Souvenirs de la marée basse (Seuil) by Chantal Thomas, will have its British version published by Pushkin Press. This novel tells about her mother, Jackie, and the legacy she left behind. A will to be free, and to swim away from the imposed and reductive destinies.
L’improbable, Le nuage rouge, Notre de besoin de Rimbaud and others (Mercure de France/Gallimard) by recently diseased French poet Yves Bonnefoy will be published by Carcanet Press.
Héliogabale ou l’anarchiste couronné (Gallimard) by Antonin Artaud will be published by Infinity Land Press. This beautifully violent and regenerative piece of literature set in ancient Rome tells the story of Hélioglobale, priest and Roman emperor at the age of fourteen.
Le Malheur du bas, by Inès Bayard (Albin Michel), published in English by 4th Estate. In this suffocating first novel, she investigates the conjugal life of a young woman’s experience of rape.
Guantanamo kid, a graphic novel illustrated by Alexandre Franc and written by Jérôme Tubiana (Dargaud) recounts the true story of Mohammed El-Gorani, a Saudi-born men who immigrated to Pakistan, wrongfully accused of being part of Al-Qaïda following the 9/11 attacks and deported to Guantanamo. It will be published by the Self Made Hero publishing house.
Alongside literary pieces, our Burgess grant also supports human sciences publications. This year grant will be provided to the following books:
Dialectique de la pop (la Découverte) by Agnès Gayraud will be published by Urbanomic. In this book, she retraces the history of pop music through its artistic and philosophic singularities, rejecting the intellectual and aesthetic taboo that surrounds this musical form, often considered as a simple object of consumption.
Le terrorisme expliqué à nos enfants (Seuil) by Tahar Ben Jelloun will be published by Hope Road. In this book, the author explains to his daughter, and by extension to any young person, what terrorism really is. He wishes to replace blind fear by knowledge of the issues at stake regarding the contemporary terrorist threats
Bernard Stiegler’s Dans la disruption, comment ne pas devenir fou ? (Les Liens qui Libèrent) will be published by Polity Press. In this piece, Bernard Stiegler analyses the traits of contemporary life, which are subject to ‘disruption’ that contribute to a disintegration of social organisations. A tale about a society on the verge of collapsing.
Enzo Traverso’s Les nouveaux visage du fascisme (Textuel) will also have its British rendition with Verso Books. Traverso offers a comparative vision of the past experiences of fascism in the 20th century and of its ideological renditions in the early 21st century, and provides us with indispensable reading keys to turn away from dangerous uses of history.
We warmly recommend these wonderful books and wish them success in the UK's literary market!
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