This past spring has been perhaps the most labour-intensive in NORLA’s history. A great deal has happened – particularly when it comes to Norway’s role as guest of honour at Frankfurt 2019:

The Frankfurt team was set up on 1 March, with a project manager, a coordinator for the literary programme and a coordinator for the cultural programme. And the first thing they focused on was presenting a broad range of Norwegian literature for translation to relevant publishers, and setting in motion potential collaborative projects for the cultural programme.

The translators are the most important stakeholders we have for bringing Norwegian literature to the world. Their work is of vital importance and to showcase this work in January 2015 we started the interview series «Translator of the Month». Here we become better acquainted with translators from the Norwegian language and their challenging work, which introduces Norwegian literature to all the different languages of the world.

The translator of the month for June and July is Maike Dörries, who translates into German. In June she took part in NORLA’s seminar for translators of literature for children and young people in Lillehammer, and is an extremely experienced translator, with more than 200 titles from Swedish, Danish and Norwegian to her name. In the interview she also mentions that she played a role in the creation of Endre Lund Eriksen’s popular novel for young people Den sommeren pappa ble homo (“That Summer my Dad was Gay”).

NORLA set up its New Voices programme to help new Norwegian authors reach the international market. The first round is now complete and the first group consisted of Simen Ekern, Roskva Koritzinsky, Nils Henrik Smith and Sigbjørn Mostue.

Georgia has proud literary traditions. Georgian is one of Europe’s oldest written languages and it is said that the country’s national epic, The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, anticipated the European Renaissance by several centuries.
An international book fair takes place in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi every year. In the last week of May, Norway was the fair’s country in focus featuring the four spring-semester participants on NORLA’s New Voices programme.

Miluše Juřičková was recently awarded the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit in the rank of Commander, in recognition of her formidable efforts as both a conveyor of Norwegian literature and culture, as a translator and as a cultural bridge-builder between Norway and the Czech republic.
Juřičková received the order at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Prague from the Norwegian Embassador, Ms Siri Ellen Sletner.
Everyone at NORLA offers her our very warmest congratulations!

Norwegian and international publishers, agents, translators and authors gathered at the annual seminar in Lillehammer.

Between 30 May and 4 June, Norway’s biggest literature festival took place in Lillehammer. During the festival, NORLA arranged a seminar for German translators of children’s and YA literature. In collaboration with the Norwegian Publishers Association and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NORLA also invited 18 international children’s book publishers to Oslo and Lillehammer. This is the first time the annual publishers seminar has been entirely devoted to children’s and YA literature.

A Norwegian sports and cultural delegation led by Norway’s Minister of Culture, Linda Hofstad Helleland, visited China from 25 to 27 May. The delegation also included the author Jostein Gaarder and NORLA’s director, Margit Walsø.
Jostein Gaarder’s books are very well known to Chinese readers as a total of 16 have already been published in Chinese!
A central part of the delegation’s cultural programme was to renew and strengthen cultural collaboration with China.

On 25 May, ZHANG Fusheng, previously editor of Nordic literature at the People’s Literature Publishing House, was awarded the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit by the Minister of Culture, Linda Hofstad Helleland.

Twelve international publishers from Germany, the United Kingdom and USA visited Oslo May 2 – 5.
It was a true pleasure to welcome our guests to Norway, and to show them some of the best literary voices Norway has to offer!

All of four editors of Karl Ove Knausgård’s books were invited to attend the opening of the Munch exhibition «Towards the Forest» («Mot skogen») which is curated by Knausgård.
The guests also visited Norwegian publishing houses and literary institutions. In addition to meeting with Norwegian authors, they also met editors and literary agents for a full three days.

NORLA offers its warmest congratulations to Gunnar Staalesen, the winner of the 2017 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year published in the UK.
Staalesen receives the award for his book Where Roses Never Die, which has been translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and published by Orenda Books.

We currently have positions available on the project team for Norway as Guest of Honour country at the 2019 Frankfurt Book Fair. We are looking for a head of PR and a project assistant for this unique international cultural initiative.
Applications close on 1 June.

More information in Norwegian available here.

Read all about the Norwegian Guest of Honour-project here.

We are delighted to introduce our translator of the month for May: Tamara Kvizhinadze, who translates into Georgian.
In conjunction with NORLA, she is responsible for a seminar this month for translators and students of Norwegian at Tbilisi University’s Centre for Scandinavian Studies, where she is also employed as a Norwegian teacher. The seminar has been arranged to coincide with the Tbilisi Book Fair, where Norway is the country in focus, and in which the four authors on NORLA’s “New Voices” programme will be participating. (Read more).

Tamara’s latest translations are When the Robbers Came to Cardamom Town by Thorbjørn Egner and The Ballad of a Broken Nose by Arne Svingen. She has translated no fewer than ten books from Norwegian to Georgian, as well as having work published in several different magazines.

Those of you who understand Norwegian can read the interview here.

Today, NORLA had the pleasure of welcoming three (of a total of four) new translators to Oslo for the sixth season of our translators hotel at Hotell Bondeheimen:

Mariia Tkachenko (Russian)
Anja Majnaric (Croatian)
Miluse Jurickova (Czech).
Sotiris Souliotis (Greek) will be joining the group next week.

We look forward to spending the next two weeks in their company!