Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Sweet news from Bitter Lemon Press

The good folks at Bitter Lemon keep making interesting tweaks and additions to their offerings. First they moved into English-language crime fiction, adding titles by D.B. Reid and Australia's Garry Disher to their fine list of translated crime.

Now, they plan a book of short stories from Italian crime writers, the company's first move into short fiction (hat tip to Crime Scraps). Crimini, with publication dates of January 2008 in the U.K. and April 2008 in the U.S., will include stories by Massimo Carlotto, Niccolo Ammaniti, Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli, Marcello Fois and others. I like the catalogue's description of the book's nine stories as often darkly humorous.

But the best news from Bitter Lemon is the upcoming publication (February 2008, U.K. / January 2009 U.S.) of Friedrich Glauser's The Spoke. Glauser was one of the outstanding crime writers ever: low-key, compassionate, witty, deadpan. Getting his work translated into English is the best thing Bitter Lemon has done.

One question: For some reason, I'd thought that Glauser wrote six novels about Sgt. Studer, and I could have sworn that I heard this from Bitter Lemon. But the company says The Spoke is the fifth and last of the Studer books. I shall investigate!

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Peter, we at Krimi-Couch.de list only five Studer novels as well. The same on the German wikipedia page. So Bitter Lemon seems to be quite right.

By the way: Did you know that one of the most important German crime fiction awards is named "Glauser"?

Best regards,

Lars

September 21, 2007  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Thanks, Lars. I had no doubt that Bitter Lemon was right about the number of Studer novels to be issued. They are the ones issuing them, so they should know. But I did think that perhaps there had been plans to issue six novels but that the plans might have been changed. And I just found two references to six Studer novels, one of them on a Barnes & Noble Web site, so at least I know I'm not the only one who made the mistake. But the Studer novels are so good, I'm sorry I'll have one fewer to read than I thought I would.

And yes, I know about the Friedrich Glauser-Preis. I recently read a short story by Gunther Gerlach that won the prize for short fiction. It was an excellent story.

September 21, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, there is a 6th novel, but not with "Wachtmeister" (the German term for Sgt.) Studer. Maybe this caused the different countings.

I know you´re monitoring German crime fiction -- did you notice "Tannöd" by Andrea Maria Schenkel? A huge success here and a very surprising one. Quercus has bought English language rights recently so watch out for that. For further information check out the German publisher´s notes on "Tannöd" for English readers.

Best,

Lars

September 21, 2007  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Ah, thanks. Perhaps you're right about the source of the confusion. Thanks also for the note about Tannöd. I had not heard the news. It's good to hear of another German crime novel being translated, another addition to Quercus' fine crime-fiction list.

September 21, 2007  

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