Literature in Translation From the iPod Generation
by Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 5/1/2006
Novels in translation aren't typically published with high commercial hopes, but two recent European bestsellers with striking parallels may have a shot at hitting American lists this summer. Both are autobiographical novels written by women born in 1985 and will be published as paperback originals. And the protagonists live in areas that Americans tend to romanticize—Paris and Rome—but they're pretty average teenagers.
Will Melissa P., author of the international bestseller 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed and the forthcoming The Scent of Your Breath (both published by Black Cat, Grove/Atlantic's paperback imprint), and Faïza Guène, author of the forthcoming Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow (Harcourt/Harvest), find a big audience in the U.S? P. (full name Panarello) is already on her way (100 Strokes sold two million copies worldwide and there are 60,000 copies of the book in print in the U.S.), and Guène looks promising: the daughter of Algerian immigrants, she grew up in public housing projects outside Paris, and her novel, which sold 25,000 copies in France, hits just as the Paris suburbs have burst onto the American consciousness.
The Scent of Your Breath (pubbing July 28, first printing 50,000) is an obsessive love story in which 19-year-old Melissa, an author who's well-recognized by the media in Rome, where she lives, leaves her selfish boyfriend for a sensual, consoling young man with whom she falls helplessly in love. Call it Somerset Maugham for the edgy Italian set. Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow (due out July 3, first printing 75,000) details 15-year-old Doria's coming-of-age in a Paris housing project called the Paradise and the clash between her patriarchal Muslim culture and her budding feminist freedom. The book has drawn comparisons to Zadie Smith's White Teeth and to La Haine, the 1995 landmark French film about the Paris suburbs.
That neither author speaks English fluently presents marketing challenges, but Harcourt has set up interviews for Guène, including one that will result in a profile in Elle Girl. And P.'s limited English didn't prevent her erotic first novel from garnering reviews in media ranging from Teen Vogue to Vanity Fair. Black Cat, as it does with all its titles, will use blogging and Web marketing to build a campaign for Scent.
Harcourt's Jenna Johnson sums up the allure of both authors (she and her colleagues have discussed 100 Strokes as a "comparison title" to Kiffe Kiffe): they "share an intimate view of a culture that most Americans don't know very well. They're very different, but it's the idea of coming into an unknown world through a young woman with a unique perspective and voice."
