Latest / Mythmakers / A Publisher's Perspective: the Pushkin Press and Fantasy in Translation Part 2 of 2 - Guest Daniel Seton

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A Publisher's Perspective: the Pushkin Press and Fantasy in Translation Part 2 of 2 - Guest Daniel Seton · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Do you have a recommendation for someone wanting to sort of dabble in French fantasy?
• 0:12
  Is there anything that you know?
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  No, I do. I mean, a series that actually I tried to acquire, but I wasn't able to by crystal
• 0:20
  dabble, which actually is very, I think one of her main influences is Miyazaki.
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  Let me just google what the English translation of the series was. I think it's the Mirror
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  War for series. I think all four volumes of this series have been published in English now.
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  The first one is called a Winters Promise. Yes, a Winters Promise. The Mirror Visitor, that's what's called.
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  The Mirror Visitor series. And they are YA, a sort of steampunk YA, very influenced by Miyazaki,
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  sitting in a kind of, well, to begin with anyway, a kind of steampunky Versailles fantasy world full of
• 1:12
  backstabbing and plotting and intrigue. And it's sort of seductive, but at the same time very cruel
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  and scary place. I actually loved it. I really recommend those. I think that's a great example of the kind of
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  fantasy that French fantasy writing can offer. Yes, and going back to the Dutch experience,
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  you very recently sent me, is it the King of the Copper Mountain?
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  Oh, yes. Which is obviously a classic work, but that's something I have found myself
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  recommending to particularly parents with children who are just learning to get
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  secure in reading because it has an element of repetition. But also what's really interesting about that
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  is the good heartedness of it. It's definitely one thing where you feel, oh, this is a really lovely
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  kind world. You've got sort of wonderfully absurd things happening like a series of bees
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  turning up and telling the story and a dragon who gets in the, in the stables.
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  But it's not, it doesn't follow, because in series of stories, it doesn't follow a
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  conventional pattern. You're always surprised by it.
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  Yes.
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  I think that's what makes it so, one of the reasons why it's been so popular because it's just so perfect for reading
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  aloud, I think, with children, which I think is so important. I think, well, that's why I
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  fell in love with reading in the first place as being read to aloud and, you know,
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  and not just picture books, my memory library novels together. And this is a novel for,
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  I take seven plus children. But one that you could just have great fun reading
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  aloud at bedtime, and it's split into these little chapters self-contained.
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  What, and as you say, it's, it's so gentle and warm, and there's just this feeling of,
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  of goodness about it, but it's really appealing.
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  Absolutely. And wonderful role model for an older king. I actually made a list of top 10 fancy
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  royalty over the Queen's Jubilee week. And that came in on my list, because I thought,
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  that's a really nice version of a king. Someone who everybody's welcome.
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  We'll fit you in somewhere in the past. So if you were going to look back at
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  member yourself as a child, what were your go-to books, perhaps fantasy books, maybe
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  that inspired you on the path? You mentioned that you read together with your parents,
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  but what's your, your favourites from back then?
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  Well, so many really, I really enjoy thinking about those times, because I just
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  fell in love with reading quite early on, and there was so many amazing books to be
• 4:07
  to discover. I think probably the first, one of the first books that I read, and one
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  of the, probably the first fantasy, but that I read was fittingly, it was The Hobbit,
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  by talking, which, you know, just kind of blew me away, and, you know, I was pretty
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  soon, I was like running around the playground at school, trying to get people to
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  play at being like elves and dwarves and Hobbits with me and became obsessed and, you
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  know, and read Lord of the Rings, and then I think that just gave me a taste for
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  all kind of all things magical. And I read so many classics, really, but I just
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  loved by authors like Diana Win Jones and Penelope Lively, Ghost of Thomas
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  Kemp, or so an Oxford, Oxfordshire based book, I think. Alan Garner, you
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  know, with Stony Brasingerman and Seacalls. And then I really got into Brian
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  Jackson, the Red Wall books. Oh, yes.
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  For those, yes, those are animal fables, aren't they, for those, you're not
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  I'm across them. Yeah, they're kind of like Sylvainian families,
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  meets Braveheart about this, also around Red Wall Abbey, which is like an
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  abbey in the middle of a B-Colick landscape populated by these lovely woodland
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  animals like mice and moles and rabbits. And they're invariably besieged by an
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  army of rats and foxes and all the scary woodland animals basically. And it
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  would culminate in a big battle. And I just couldn't get enough of them on
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  must have read. I don't know, read them many, many times. And then
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  another author that I think I, I moved on to because he also had the
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  mice, the stars, his stories was Robin Jarvis. I don't know if you're familiar
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  because that for my books also the witty witches. I'll absolutely love those.
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  They're very different from Red Wall in the sense that they are much more
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  magical, much darker and scarier. I mean, I think you could call them a horror
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  really. There were some really frightening moments, really tragic moments
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  to a real sense of magic and other worldliness about them that I can
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  sort of still feel now and I think about them. And that's something that I,
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  that's the scariness and the darkness that I found in those books is something
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  that I think is quite rare actually for. To find in children's books, something
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  that I loved and something that I think perhaps there should be more of.
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  We're publishing a Finnish children's novel, this autumn, it's called
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  History of Rosbury Hill. And it's kind of, it's a gothic, a gothic
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  mystery set in a sanatorium in a snowy Finnish forest in the 1920s and it's about
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  a young 12 year old girl who gets sent there to recover from tuberculosis.
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  But she soon discovers that, you know, there are some mysterious goings on
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  at this sanatorium and she tries to get to bottom of them. But well, I'm not
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  going to spoil it for you, but it doesn't all go well and it sounds
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  up to be quite a dangerous and scary place. And I heard the author of that
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  either friend, she talks quite eloquently about how it's important to
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  write scary stories for children because when the child is reading a story
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  they're in control of what they're imagining and what they're picturing in their
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  mind's eye and they can, they can sort of make it scary or is, you know,
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  or tone it down as much as they want or they can stop when they want and go
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  on when they, when they feel ready. It's not like when you're being assaulted
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  by images from a TV screen, for example. So, yeah, and I agree with her.
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  I think scary children's books, there should be more of them.
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  And then on my journey, I suppose, well, I could go, I could see a forever
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  listing of all the children's books that I loved. But when I was a
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  11, I think, was when Northern Lights came out by Philip Pullman and that
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  just blew my mind as well. I could never read anything like that before.
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  I remember taking it on holiday and, yeah, it was just incredible.
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  I think it had all of the magic and adventure that I was used to and sort of
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  addicted to by that time, but it also just had all this such depth and all
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  these new ideas and references that I, you know, lived me down new paths.
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  And also this, I loved something that really sort of sparked my imagination
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  was this idea of alternate worlds, the idea that things could be different.
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  If only for just some small changes here and there, we could be living in a completely
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  different world. And that's once you realize that, it sort of opens the door
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  to thinking about so many more fascinating things.
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  It is interesting that the modern, well, they've been around since early in the
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  20th century, but the sort of multiverse concepts have always existed in fantasy
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  with the, the underhill, the world of the Fay and, you know, the travelling
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  between worlds has happened. We obviously traditionally, we all knew
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  something, didn't we? Because it's been there in story, just the physicist
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  a while to figure it out. So, yeah.
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  Another, another great classic that I love when I was a kid, the world
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  will be chased by Joan Aiken, which I didn't even realise at the time was like an
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  alternate history, but it isn't it. It's like it's an England where the
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  glorious revolution never, never happened. It's like a Catholic England,
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  which I think went over my heads because when I first read it,
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  yeah, it's interesting.
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  Joan Aiken is a, I remember reading, she had some, one of the things that
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  she does is really great titles for her books.
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  And she, I think she perhaps has been a little bit forgotten.
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  I'm sorry, collection of stories of her because the necklace of
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  raindrops, which I kept boring again and again from the library,
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  because I just love the title more than anything else about it.
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  And again, with illustrations, I've got several of her as on my,
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  my classic Georgians bookshelf in the other room.
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  So, what about now? And you don't have to confine yourself to
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  children's books. What's your top read of the last decade,
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  would you say?
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  A fantasy level.
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  I find it quite hard to, I mean, I read what Susanna Clarks,
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  you've got called.
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  Piranasi.
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  Piranasi last year, which I loved, I thought that was just almost
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  impossibly mysterious and intriguing and like really paid off in the end.
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  And I guess that reminded me of this is probably the more than the decade ago now,
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  that Jonathan Clark, Jonathan Strangemist in the road.
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  Yeah, that's the one.
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  Came out.
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  That was, I thought that was really striking, but just the sense of
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  weirdness and otherness and like menace that she gave magical
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  environment.
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  It's a really distinctive and not really stayed with me.
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  I think both her and Margaret Atwood show how you can do fantasy
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  within a little, you know, a literary fiction tradition.
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  It's quite often fantasy gets hived off into genre fiction.
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  And people who sort of self select, they don't go and bother to look
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  at themselves on the shelf if they don't like, you know,
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  the walls and things.
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  But both of those writers have found a route, which is respectable,
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  as far as the living establishment is concerned.
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  It's quite fascinating, really the politics of that.
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  So tell us about the pushkin press.
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  If you, are you a, you don't sound like a publisher who invites
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  submissions, you go out and find things in translation that have
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  been published, is that how it works for you?
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  Well, no, we, for start, we don't only publish books in translation.
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  So we, and we do publish English language original stuff as well.
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  In terms of how we get our submissions, I mean, sometimes they're
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  submitted to us by agents.
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  A lot of the time they come from translators who do a really
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  valuable job in, you know, not just in translating books,
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  but in finding them and championing them.
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  And in, you know, often, you know, they're the ones who have
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  the first idea that I know this book deserves to be read
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  in English.
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  And yeah, and then there's a good amount of just kind of rummaging
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  around and finding things, which is very enjoyable.
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  And before your colleague gets deluged with unsolicited submissions,
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  anyone listening to this who has a manuscript,
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  do go and read what they want on the pushkin press website rather
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  than just sent it in because, you know, it can be a bit of a
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  nightmare for the editors if things come at them from all over.
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  Yes.
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  So Daniel, yeah, I don't want to get your colleague in trouble.
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  But Daniel, when we finish our podcast, we always have a section
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  where we have a little thing about where and all the fantasy
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  that we've met be it in books or on film or wherever,
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  would it be the best for something?
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  And we've done all sorts of different subjects from where's the best place
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  to get a magical sword or best place to go down the pub.
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  But with you, I thought, where's the best place to be a publisher?
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  Now, I think we probably have to expand the definition to include book
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  seller or book creator.
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  Otherwise, we might be very limited on our choices.
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  Have you had a chance to think where you would like to sell books
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  in which fantasy world?
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  Hmm.
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  I was trying to think about, yeah, I was trying to think of literary
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  locations in fantasy world.
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  It was quite fun.
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  Something that really that came to my mind was some Terry Pratchett.
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  Anc more pork and the library, actually, the unseen university.
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  That has that amazing orangutan librarian
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  and his full of all sorts of magical brimwars, et cetera.
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  So that came to my mind.
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  And also, if you don't mind me plugging another one of our books,
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  there's going to be something.
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  There's a wonderful German fantasy title called Bramble Fox
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  by an author called Catherine Todassi.
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  We're publishing it this autumn.
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  Even though the author is German, it's set in Britain in Wales.
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  And it's really informed by British mythology.
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  And actually a lot of the classics that I've already mentioned.
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  She has a real love for those two.
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  So it's really interesting to see those reflected back by a German author.
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  It's brilliant.
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  I think people already already love it.
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  But one of the protagonists of that book is called Ben.
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  And he's a young world boy who works in a book shop with his mum.
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  And so what I really like about the story is that he's having
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  this amazing magical adventure.
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  He goes through into fairy, the fairy world,
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  encounters all sorts of peril.
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  And he's experiencing it and viewing it through the lens of,
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  you know, Tolkien.
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  And all these other classics that we've been talking about.
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  So he's kind of
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  seeing this story through the prison of these, these books that we already love,
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  which I think is really interesting.
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  And anyway, in this fancy world, he finds a,
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  an amazing, again, a library called, a place called World's End,
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  which is kind of like a skyscraper driven down into the earth,
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  just full of endless new books for him to read,
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  which is like his idea of heaven.
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  I thought that was such a lovely, such a lovely idea.
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  I really enjoyed it.
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  As for where it would be good to be a publisher or books.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, that's a bit tricky.
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  I think for me, I would, I would really like to,
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  it's probably a lot of our listeners are shouting this out at us.
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  I'd quite like to be in Diagon Alley and have a bunch of shop down there.
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  One that doesn't get blasted by death eaters.
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  But yeah, that sounds quite fun.
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  That's a great answer.
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  But, you know, that's where I would pick.
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  Well, thank you so much, Daniel, for talking to us,
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  and giving us the publisher's perspective,
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  and particularly bringing to our attention the books that we may not be aware of
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  because of a English language bias that, you know, happens.
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  And we'll put a link to the press in the show,
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  that people can go and check out what the pushkin press gets up to.
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  But so thank you very much for joining us,
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  and look forward to really more of your books, hopefully, for a view.
• 17:58
  Well, thank you.
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  Thanks for having me.
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  It's been great fun.
• 18:07
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• 18:10
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