Good to see some Frédéric Dard anticipation-excitement building, as Pushkin Press are set to publish a couple by the prolific (and super-best-selling) French master -- even if it comes with horrific headlines such as 'Unknown' French author's noir crime novels set for UK, as Dalya Alberge writes in The Observer.
'Unknown' in quotation marks indeed -- Dard has sold ... more than most (literally hundreds of millions of copies).
But, yes, he's not well-represented in English (but I did slip him in my The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction because ... Frédéric Dard ! come on !).
And, yes, Pushkin's commissioning editor Daniel Seton is correct in noting that one reason so little has been translated into English is because especially the San-Antonio books (the bulk of his output) rely on language-play that's hard to translate, while these 'novels of the night' (that Pushkin is focusing on): "are less reliant on that kind of wordplay".
Nevertheless, the translator of the first title they're publishing is none other than master word-playing translator David Bellos.
It's already under review at the complete review, too: Bird in a Cage.
Reviews of the other ones will follow just as soon as I can get my hands on them.
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Posted on 5/24/2016
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Posted on 5/24/2016
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