After years of preparation, the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest selling rights event for the book industry in the world, finally welcomes Canada as guest of honor. Pandemic obliges, it is pre-recorded video speeches by writers Margaret Atwood and Joséphine Bacon which were broadcast during the opening ceremony on Tuesday evening. While some sixty Canadian writers had been invited to go to Frankfurt for the occasion, only eight agreed to make the trip, including five Quebecers: Catherine Mavrikakis, Dany Laferrière, Michel Jean, Kim Thúy and Heather O ‘ Neill.
COVID-19 inevitably contained the scale of the event, of which Canada was to be the guest of honor in 2020. Since this edition was finally held strictly virtual, the organizers kept Canada in the spotlight. This year.
“Several events were canceled,” says Caroline Fortin, general manager of Éditions Québec Amérique and president of the Canada FBM 2021 committee. “It took political and diplomatic interventions to convince the countries invited during the following years to move their year. “
Germany, an important market
“We will have to wait until the end of the week to find out how this year is different from the others,” added Simon de Jocas, Les 400 coups editions, who was there. “But I can say that I usually have meetings every 30 minutes from 8:30 am to 6 pm Wednesday through Saturday. There, I have 12 meetings over two days… It is not comparable. “
The fact remains that Canada had some 400 books translated into German, including some 100 books in French, in preparation for the event. The country is also represented by two separate kiosks, that of Québec Édition and that of Livres Canada Books. The first, because of its linguistic proximity to France, is located near the European publishers; the second is not far from American publishers and the Anglo-Saxon world.
“German books are one of the most important markets in the world,” says Karine Vachon, general manager of the National Association of Book Publishers and of Québec Édition. “The Germans read a lot. They have a great production and they translate a lot. […] When an author is translated into German, it often spills over into other markets. “
The German book market is nearly twice as large as that of French books, although the country’s population is only slightly larger than that of its neighbor.
In an interview with her German publisher Christian Ruzicska, from Secession editions, Catherine Mavrikakis, whose book The sky of Bay City just translated, was astonished that his work on the subject of the Holocaust had pleased a German publisher. “Rather, I found that there were really strong, hard and intense images,” replied Christian Ruzicska.
It was raining birds
“The semantics of the images that are generally used to try to convey the horror of Auschwitz are black and white photos that were taken by the Allies when we saw the horrible. This book works with other colors, with other realities. […] It’s an interpretation of reality because of the perspective the young narrator has in her head. She is so traumatized, haunted by what her grandparents went through. You never know if it’s something she dreams of or if it’s real. “
In recent years, the German public has been particularly won over by the novel It was raining birds, by Jocelyne Saucier, who has become a successful bookstore in the country, adds Karine Vachon.
Moreover, in Germany as elsewhere, the pandemic has been rather profitable for the book market. In the largest literary market in the European Union, bookstores have seen their online revenues jump 20%. The sale of audiobooks and digital books also saw double-digit growth. “The book industry has passed the COVID stress test,” Karin Schmidt-Friderichs, president of the German Association of Publishers and Booksellers, noted Tuesday.
With Agence France-Presse