Jill Schoolman founded Archipelago Books ten years ago. She’s published Knausgaard, Cărtărescu, Khoury, Duras, Mukasonga and Tsvetaeva, among others. In this BOMB Magazine interview with Bibi Deitz, she talks about the importance of literary translation:
BD It’s vital to read literature from around the world. For those of us striving to find more international literature, which books would you recommend or deem unmissable?
JS Oh, there are so so many books that I feel close to. For starters, the novels by Céline and Ondaatje and Krasznahorkai and Nabokov, Hrabal, Rulfo, Elias Khoury and Magdalena Tulli; and stories by Jergović, Gombrowicz, Cortázar, Calvino, Sait Faik Abasıyanık, and Borges. Héctor Abad’s Oblivion, Breytenbach’s A Season in Paradise, Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, and Antonio Tabucchi and Josep Pla; the poems of Mahmoud Darwish, José Ángel Valente, Nichita Stănescu, Ingeborg Bachmann, Różewicz, Césaire, Soyinka, Leopardi. More and more I am drawn to books that defy genre, like Ivan Vladislavić’s Portrait with Keys or Railtracks by John Berger and Anne Michaels.