Books by Damion Searls
Where You Come From
Saša Stanišić, Damion Searls (translator)
🏆 Winner of the 2019 German Book Prize
“Look out for the new book from Jon Fosse, A Shining, which will be released 31 October in the US and 1 November in the UK. It’s a surreal, dreamlike sequence set in the Norwegian woods, in which the narrator’s car becomes stuck in a rut on a remote track. Like his remarkable Septology, which floored me last year, the English translation is by the US writer Damian Searls—who learned Norwegian specifically to translate Fosse.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
“The Septology as a whole, and A New Name in particular, is an extraordinary meditation on art and love, and the possibility of eternity. Each of the individual sections in the book is a single sentence. Those sentences have an incantatory feel to them. There is a lot of repetition, a lot of repeated images, repeated sections. It has an extraordinary hypnotic quality. Frequently, the reader will shift from being inside the mind of character A to character B and it will take a moment before you realise it, but that’s entirely deliberate. The prose is luminous. It’s like swimming in an open sea. You can’t see land in any direction. You aren’t trying to. You have no frame of reference as to where you are. You are simply here, and must deal with the waves as they come. It’s a reading experience unlike anything else I’ve come across in the last several years, and an extraordinary meditation on human mortality and human endeavour, what we do with our lives, what we don’t do, what we may regret, what we may invest ourselves in—in terms of our art or whatever it is.” Read more...
The Best of World Literature: The 2022 International Booker Prize Shortlist
Frank Wynne, Translator
Interviews where books by Damion Searls were recommended
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1
Tomb of Sand
by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell -
2
Cursed Bunny
by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur -
3
A New Name: Septology VI-VII
by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls -
4
Heaven
by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd -
5
The Books of Jacob: A Novel
by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft -
6
Elena Knows
by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle
The Best of World Literature: The 2022 International Booker Prize Shortlist, recommended by Frank Wynne
The Best of World Literature: The 2022 International Booker Prize Shortlist, recommended by Frank Wynne
The International Booker Prize celebrates the best fiction in translation published over the previous year. Frank Wynne, acclaimed translator and chair of the 2022 judging panel, tells Five Books about the six novels that made the shortlist, and reminds readers that world literature need not be tough, consumed only in the interests of self-improvement—but is often joyful, surprising and full of feeling.
Notable Novels of Fall 2023, recommended by Cal Flyn
Outside it’s autumnal and the nights are drawing in. All the better for admiring the bright lights of publishing’s starriest season, when the shiniest baubles are released in time for the Christmas rush. Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn rounds up the most notable new novels of Fall 2023, including eagerly-awaited books from Zadie Smith and Jesmyn Ward, plus the buzziest new releases in literary fiction and novels-in-translation
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1
Where You Come From
Saša Stanišić, Damion Searls (translator) -
2
Glorious People
Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Imogen Taylor (translator) -
3
Ada's Realm
Sharon Dodua Otoo and Jon Cho-Polizzi (translator) -
4
In the Belly of the Queen
Karosh Taha, Grashina Gabelmann (translator) -
5
Monsters Like Us
Ulrike Almut Sandig, Karen Leeder (translator)
The Best 21st-Century German Novels, recommended by Katy Derbyshire
The Best 21st-Century German Novels, recommended by Katy Derbyshire
There’s always been a fondness in the English-speaking world for novels about German history, but recently the books being translated into English have become much more diverse and interesting, says award-winning translator and publisher Katy Derbyshire. She introduces us to some her favourite German novels from recent years, taking us beyond Germany to Bosnia, Donbas and even Ghana.
