Quebec literature certainly has the wind in its sails. In addition to the fact that Quebec will be in the spotlight at the Paris Book Festival next April, another good news was announced Thursday evening at the inauguration of the Outaouais Book Fair: La Belle Province will be there guest of honor at the Gothenburg Book Fair in 2026.
Although few people except fans of Scandinavian thrillers can locate Gothenburg on a map, the Swedish city nevertheless hosts each year the second largest book fair in Europe, after that of Frankfurt, Germany, where Canada was in the spotlight in 2021.
“It’s the biggest cultural event in the Nordic countries. It’s really huge. We receive between 80,000 and 90,000 visitors over four days,” underlined Oskar Ekström, director of programming for the Fair, who was in Quebec this week for the announcement with the general director, Frida Edman. For comparison, the Montreal Book Fair last November welcomed nearly 88,000 visitors for five days.
The Gothenburg Book Fair is held annually during the last week of September. And if the announcement was made more than two years in advance, it is to give players in the field time to prepare, explains Geneviève Pigeon, president of the board of directors of the National Association of Publishers of books (ANEL) and also general director of the publishing house L’instant soi.
“This deadline gives us time to carry out exploration missions and plan a good plan of attack so that the event is used to its full potential, the idea being that, in an ideal world, we arrive in 2026 with a certain number of translations so that the Swedish public is able to read Quebec books and that this serves as a springboard for us to translate even more,” she explains.
To date, a few Quebec authors have already been translated into Swedish, including Kim Thúy, who met with great public and critical success in the country of Henning Mankell, Lise Tremblay and, more recently, Dominique Fortier, Catherine Mavrikakis, Jocelyne Saucier and Larry Tremblay.
The fact remains that a good number of authors translated into English, German or Spanish such as Naomi Fontaine, Michel Jean and Christian Guay-Poliquin could also enjoy great success with Swedish readers, according to ANEL. Especially since a translation into Swedish could open the door to other Scandinavian languages, the event attracting publishers from all Nordic countries.
“As an editor,” Geneviève Pigeon intervenes, “I have authors who have been translated into three, four, five languages, but Swedish is not there yet. And it is certain that when we meet a foreign publisher with a book that has already been translated into several languages, it proves, to a certain extent, its universality and its ability to reach a foreign audience. Which means it’s a great opportunity for us to meet publishers that we might not otherwise meet. »
Sweden and the Scandinavian countries also represent a large pool of readers, notes Frida Edman, general director of the Gothenburg Book Fair. “People read a lot and are interested in all kinds of literature – thrillers, feel-good novels, poetry… And the publishing world in Quebec is very dynamic. In addition, I believe that our readers will recognize themselves in the stories of Quebec because, like us, nature is very present there and we have many points in common,” she concludes.