Featured titles
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Translating Umberto Eco as Revolutions Erupt, by Elena Kostioukovitch (2026, NF)
Rights sold: Italy - LA NAVE DI TESEO
Translating Umberto Eco as Revolutions Erupt is at once a collective autobiography, an essay on translation, a journey into the creative heart of Umberto Eco, and a window into the cultural and political transformations of recent decades.
Elena Kostioukovitch weaves her own experiences as a translator with those of the colleagues who brought the works of the author of The Name of the Rose into various foreign languages. It begins with the gripping story behind that extraordinary debut novel: though published worldwide, it was opposed by the Soviet Communist Party for its "relativist" ideas, translated in secret, and only published in Russia in 1988 following Gorbachev’s reforms.
Through untold anecdotes, photographs, reflections on translation choices, and a careful reconstruction of the technological evolution that changed publishing forever, this volume rebuilds the dialogue between Eco and his translators—showing an author who was witty, occasionally obsessive about his texts, but always deeply human. Yet, it is also the story of a clash between cultures, of a censorship that spares no one, and of a changing Russia—from Soviet rigidity to fragile freedom, right up to present-day tensions—all observed through the lens of those translating a staunch pro-European.
This book is both a tribute and a firsthand testament to the creative workshop of a great author, serving as a companion piece to the reflections gathered by Eco himself in Experiences in Translation (Dire quasi la stessa cosa). It is an exploration of translation told firsthand by those tasked with the mission of recreating an entire literary universe.
Technical details: Original language - Italian, characters, words
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Envy, a novel by Yuri Olesha
Rights sold / Published by (rights may be available): Czech Republic - Melantrich, Svět Sovětů, Denmark - Akademisk Boghandel, France - Fayard, L'Age d'Homme, Hungary - Európa, Germany – Suhrkamp, Greece - Antipodes, Italy - Roma, Einaudi, Carbonio Editore, Israel - Keter, Latvia - Literatūras Kombains, Netherlands - Van Oorschot, Poland - Państwowy In-t Wydawniczy, Spain - Acantilado, Turkey - Kırmızı Kedi, Merkez Kitaplar, English - Norton, New York Review Books Classics
The central of Olesha's famous novel is the fate of the intelligentsia in Russia’s postrevolutionary society. Olesha’s obvious enthusiasm for the new state of affairs did not hinder him from seeing and conveying to the reader the dramatic clash between the rational industrial state and the creative aspirations of Nikolay Kavalerov, one of the main characters in the novel. This clash is also echoed in Kavalerov himself: he has talent and creative potential, but he throws it away. Envy is one of a number of 20th-century Russian novels in which the protagonists clash with Soviet reality and as a result find themselves marginalized.
In his best novel Envy, all wry humor and narrowed eyes, Olesha presents two sides of the same coin: a self-satisfied sausage king and a drunken failure the former picks up in the street. Poetic and satiric and quite an achievement, it is a novel everyone should read.” —Flavorwire
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