‘I’m told there will be blood on the floor’
Former CBC Radio host Eleanor Wachtel on chairing the jury for the International Booker Prize
It’s been a banner few years for Canadians and the Booker Prize, not because of wins or even nominations, but because both the 2023 Booker Prize for fiction and the 2024 International Booker Prize have had Canadians as their jury chairs.
The jury for regular prize, which was awarded in November to Irish writer Paul Lynch for “Prophet Song,” was chaired by B.C. writer Esi Edugyan (who was herself a finalist for the prize twice, in 2018 for “Washington Black” and in 2011 for “Half-Blood Blues”). The long list for the international prize comes out on Monday and its jury is chaired by Eleanor Wachtel, who recently retired from hosting the CBC radio show “Writers & Company” for 33 years, although she’s putting together a podcast and continues to broadcast “Writers & Company From the Archives.”
The Star chatted with her on WhatsApp from London about life after radio, the importance of translation and what she’s looking forward to reading these days — after she and the four other jurors finish reading and judging the 149 entries to the prize before choosing a five-title short list and a winner.
That’s a lot of entries — what stood out to you?
One of the interesting aspects of this prize and the crop of books we get is that they weren’t all written this year. They were published in English (in the U.K. and Ireland this year), but they may have been produced over a range of time. Even so, they engage with what’s happening in the world today in many ways. Some seem to be prescient, anticipating current global violence or ecological disaster. And some seem altogether timeless: about love and heartbreak, about racism and oppression. But the thing about great writing is that it’s implicitly optimistic. The power of words to make connections and inhabit other sensibilities.
Are there any other common themes or ideas or styles?
It’s hard to generalize, but I did notice three things: there’s a lot of autofiction, novels that seem very much inspired by the authors’ own experiences. Many books revolve around violence, especially violence against women. And to a surprising degree, how much politics intersect with the personal, the ways in which what’s going on in the outside world impinges on the emotional life of the characters.
What’s the process with the other jury members been like so far?
Everyone on the jury considers all the books; it’s not like there’s any pre-screening. And we all come at the books from different perspectives and different tastes, so I feel we cover quite a wide range. We received the books in batches, starting last August, and we met online, approximately monthly. But (this week) were our first in-person meetings here in London. The best part, really, is the discussion was very respectful. I’m told there’s blood on the floor when it gets to the short list and the winner, but at the moment it’s been a very nice process.
You said that you all come with your own perspectives and tastes. What are yours?
I come from 33 years of interviewing international writers. And so I think that has certainly affected my appreciation for the power of translators to open borders of the imagination to create a worldwide community of readers. And that’s something that I think was invisible to me beforehand. When I was growing up or was in university, I would be reading books in translation — Kafka or Dostoevsky or whomever — and you’re not even aware that you’re reading a translation. I think my experience of interviewing international authors has helped expand my appreciation of the talent of translators.
All of these books are translations. What makes a good translation?
Although it celebrates books in translation, it’s not a translation prize, per se — we don’t have people on the jury who speak the other languages; (we don’t) consult an expert in the other language and show them pages and say, “What do you think?” There are all different theories of what translation should be like and what it should do. But it’s the invisible underappreciated toil of these very talented people so you almost don’t notice the translation unless it goes clunk. We didn’t really have formal criteria, but it has to be a good book in the sense that it reads well, that it takes us to another world and into someone else’s skin in a way that we inhabit and enjoy, and forget that it’s a translation.
Translators are really a bridge between readers and writers, and ideas and countries, aren’t they?
Exactly. They are totally that and the only way we even know about these other countries or have a sense of what it’s like to inhabit their worlds is through the work of translators. The American translator Edith Grossman (who translated Latin American and Spanish authors, including Gabriel García Márquez, said that “Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation. No two languages, with all their accretions of tradition and culture, ever dovetail perfectly.”
Do you think translators get enough appreciation?
It’s been quite an underappreciated art. They’ve had to fight to even get their names on the cover or on the front page of a book. It’s another reason that it’s good that there is a translation prize because it draws attention to them and acknowledges their work. And the £50,000 prize is split equally between the author and the translator.
We’ve all put phrases into Google and its AI bots to translate. As it gets more sophisticated, do you think AI could replace a human translator?
That’s a subject that’s come up a lot lately with the broader trends of AI and machine-led alternatives. My answer, in some ways, is the wish that the bots stick to more mundane preoccupations and leave imaginative writing to writers with imagination.
For 34 years (your CBC show and now the International Booker), your reading has been very proscribed. What are you looking forward to reading now?
There’s a stack beside my bed (so big) that I have to crawl out on the other side now. I’ve been saving up. The other occupational shortcoming is that I’m actually quite a slow reader — life’s too short and whatever I read has some value or (is something) that I’m interested in. The world’s been my oyster so I’ve been reading really good, interesting stuff. And I think it will continue. One arena I can read up on is dead authors; I only used to be able to read them in the summer.
Of course, because you had to read writers you could interview.
I’ve interviewed literary biographers, but it’s not the same thing. Or else writers like well, I like Elena Ferrante and the Neapolitan quartet. I had to read that in the summer, too, because while she’s alive, she either doesn’t speak English or won’t communicate in English or doesn’t do media.
THE LONG LIST FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE COMES OUT MONDAY, WITH THE SHORT LIST ANNOUNCED ON APRIL 9 AND THE WINNER ON MAY 21.