NORLA has been preparing for a digital autumn and we have had a great response from the embassies about presenting Norwegian literature.

It is now a year since German bookstores, NORLA and the Norwegian Embassy in Berlin completed the final preparations for Norway as Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse. We have maintained the connections and friendships established over the last few years and continued the good cooperation we have with the German bookstores in 2020.

October’s translator of the month is Paul Russell Garrett, who translates from Norwegian into English. Paul is originally from Canada, but has lived in London for almost twenty years. He took a degree in Scandinavian Studies at UCL, with a focus on Danish, Old Norse, Literature and History. At the University of Copenhagen he delved even deeper into Danish, studying Danish language, linguistics and translation. Paul also has experience teaching Danish at universities, college and privately. He first started translating Danish literature and drama, but soon moved into Norwegian, so far translating Lars Mytting’s The Sixteen Trees of the Somme, John Arne Riise’s biography, penned by Jens M Johansson, The Running Man, as well as Eirik Vold’s biography, Hugo Chávez: the Bolivarian Revolution from Up Close. Paul has a special place in his heart for theatre and has done a lot of work with drama — as a translator and more. His translation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was staged in London’s West End in 2012. He’s now in charge of the theatre translator mentoring programme for the London-based theatre company, Foreign Affairs.

Innovation Norway will be directing the work on the national tourism strategy. The process involves relevant actors from various industries and sectors, including businesses from tourist destinations, local municipalities, knowledge communities and the industry itself; and almost 300 of these, including NORLA, have taken part in the input meetings. The strategy development is being based on the important opportunities and challenges within tourism, and will offer proposals for new solutions and measures towards a more profitable and sustainable Norwegian tourism sector.

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We at NORLA want to showcase the crucial work translators do, and this week we will be celebrating the patron saint of translators, St. Hieronymus. Even though our task is promoting Norwegian literature, we like to use the occasion of “Hieronymus day” to recommend good books that have been translated well into Norwegian.
Thank you to all the translators out there who make world literature available to us!

September is World Kid Lit Month, an initiative focusing on disseminating literature for young readers written in languages other than English, and books that are available in English translation.

Every spring and autumn, NORLA presents a selection of current Norwegian books to international publishers and translators at book fairs and seminars. This autumn we did things differently and invited the authors and illustrators to present their books in a series of short films which were then presented to fiction and non-fiction editors, and translators, at three tailor-made webinars.

We at NORLA are very proud and happy to present our selected titles for this autumn: 24 great books divided into fiction and non-fiction, for both adults, and children and young adults.

See our selected titles here.

This year we have also made short films where the authors and illustrators present their titles. You may watch the films on YouTube.

September’s translator of the month is Jonas Rasmussen (b. 1975) from Sweden. Rasmussen – in addition to being a translator, primarily from Danish but also from Norwegian – is also an author himself. From Danish he has translated about twenty works in various genres with his main emphasis being poetry collections. But he has also translated novels, books for children and young adults and a biography. From Norwegian he has so far translated two books; Steffen Kverneland’s Munch (Placebo Press, 2015) and Mona Høvrings Because Venus Crossed an Alp Violet on the Day I Was Born (Lil´lit Förlag, 2020). Rasmussen has studied at Lund University’s Writers’ School and has a master’s degree in literary studies, as well as a master’s degree in library and information science. He lives in Lund and made his debut as a translator in 2007 and as a writer in 2008.

On 15 April, NORLA introduced a new, temporary guarantee scheme for translation support. There was a need to support writers, translators, publishers and literary agents during an uncertain phase of the corona pandemic.

To replace the other meeting places that will not be available this autumn, NORLA are hosting a number of digital alternatives.

Every day on Instagram, we share great translations of Norwegian books, as Instagram stories. Since 2004 alone, NORLA has supported the translations of over 5,500 books into 67 languages. And it’s a pleasure to show some of these books to you!

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Click here for a compilation of all the book covers