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7/5/2010 11:29:58 AM
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Janet Hutchings
Posts 34
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4th of July weekend in the U.S., everywhere you look there’s a flag, or someone otherwise sporting red, white, and blue. Country flags are among the emblems of EQMM’s Passport to Crime department, but Old Glory will never appear there, because that space is set aside for the work of other nations’ crime and mystery writers. Not that we aren’t proud of the fact that both of the central roots of the contemporary mystery—the detective story and hard-boiled private eye fiction—originated with American writers. (Mystery fans have good reason to wave the Stars and Stripes.) But in 2002, when EQMM launched Passport to Crime, there was far too little crime fiction from other countries seeing print in English for the U.S. market.
Getting up and running with our translation series was a challenge. Fortunately, we had the assistance of the IACW, which was founded in 1986 and had, by then, established branches worldwide that could help us to identify authors, readers, translators, and literary agents in the countries they served. Then, as in most business ventures, one connection led to another. Pretty soon we knew of translators’ organizations, yearly mystery awards similar to the American Edgars in several other countries, and Web sites that our translators could visit to scout for new authors. The series remains a challenge, however, since we want to try to keep adding new countries and authors rather than repeating our earlier finds. Unfortunately, there are many countries that have no writers’ organizations we can tap into, though we suspect they may have a thriving literature of crime fiction. (Which brings me to one reason for today’s blog: If you read a foreign language and know of a crime or mystery writer who might suit Passport to Crime, do, please, let us know!)
A lot has changed on the international crime-fiction scene since EQMM began actively seeking stories to translate. There’s been a virtual explosion of interest by American book publishers in bringing out translations, and crime and mystery fiction seems to be the dominant category. It’s easy to see why. However introspective or character-driven a mystery may be, a strong plot is almost always present too. And that makes it easier for publishers to sell a book by a writer new to their market. When you have a plot teaser, you have, after all, a hook for potential buyers. Besides, mystery fiction, with its procedural aspects (involving police and other organizations) seems uniquely positioned to give readers a sense of how other societies work.
Still, why now? Many non-English speaking countries have crime- or mystery-writing traditions that go back at least a hundred years and the percentage of books making it into translation for the U.S. market has, up till now, mostly been negligible. A July 2, 2010 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Fiction’s Global Crime Wave" cites the current share of translated books coming out in the U.S. as 3%, which is, of course, still small, but it is (according to other sources) threefold what it was only a few years ago. What is more telling is that the Journal article refers to a fall in sales of U.S. crime novels in overseas markets: down 25% in Germany, 15% in France, and 90% in Scandinavia. The reason for this is speculated to be that publishers in those countries now have so many good home-grown mysteries to draw from that they don’t need as many U.S. imports. Other countries, in other words, especially in Europe, seem to be experiencing a great upsurge in creativity in our field. So if we’re importing more books from other cultures and languages, maybe it’s not so much that we have become more receptive to what’s out there in the rest of the world as that there’s now so much good stuff available overseas that publishers would be foolish to overlook it.
What do you think, would you like to see more crime fiction translated for sale in the U.S.?
Janet Hutchings
Editor
EQMM
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7/5/2010 1:01:50 PM
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Leigh
Posts 211
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I would. I read about as much foreign fiction as I do domestic. I mentioned Sebastien Japrisot before– who can ignore a noir title like The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun?
I highly recommend Japrisot's wrenching One Deadly Summer ((L’été meurtrier, en français)), a crime that went so, so wrong. The novel is like quicksand– slow to suck you in but once it has you, you can't escape.
edited by Leigh on 7/18/2010
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7/10/2010 4:01:18 PM
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Yoshinori Todo
Posts 232
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What about Seicho Matsumuto and Kyotaro Nishimura?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seich%C5%8D_Matsumoto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyotaro_Nishimura
I have never read anything by these Japanese mystery authors myself, but I remember my mother used to love them! 
--
Josh
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7/18/2010 11:47:25 AM
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Leigh
Posts 211
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Criminal Brief talks about the Swedish equivalent of the MWA.
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