New Round of French Voices

French Voices is a program that started a few years ago as a way of promoting contemporary French fiction and non-fiction. The goal is to select ten works a year that were published since the year 2000 that represent “new trends in fiction and under-represented perspectives or points of view in non-fiction works” and support these books with a $6,000 translation grant.

Here are the lists of recipients from 2006, 2007, and 2008. Interestingly, a few of these titles have wound up on the Best Translated Book Award longlists, including In the United States of Africa, by Abdourahman Waberi.

Anyway, we received notice yesterday that Mathias Enard’s Zone has been selected as one of this year’s grantees! This is very exciting, and helps ensure that the book will get some extra attention. And that it will include an interesting introduction . . .

Here’s the rest of the recipients with the original French publisher and date of original publication:

• 03 by Jean-Christophe Valtat (Gallimard, 2005)

• Anthologie: A life on Paper, by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud (Various publishers)

• Coma, by Pierre, Guyotat (Mercure de France, 2006)

• Les Enfants de la colonie by Emmanuelle Saada (Editions la Découverte, 2007)

• Fuir by Jean-Philippe Toussaint (Editions de Minuit, 2005)

• L’Invention de la culture hétérosexuelle, by Louis-George Tin (Edition Autrement, 2008)

• Là où les tigres sont chez eux, by Jean-Marie Blas De Roblès (Zulma, 2008)

• On n’y voit rien by Daniel Arasse (Editions Denoël, 2003)

• Treason by Hédi Kaddour (Gallimard, 2000)

• La Vie possible de Christian Boltanski, by Christian Boltanski and Catherine Grenier (Le Seuil, 2007)

Not sure if there are American publishers already lined up for these—except for the Toussaint, which is already available from Dalkey Archive as Running Away.