This week, our Editors-at-Large bring us updates on the publishing industry across the globe, from the United States to North Macedonia. In the United States, book co-op Tertulia’s virtual reading lounge features four new and exciting titles, and in North Macedonia, the latest novel of German-Macedonian author, philosopher, and artist Kitsa Kolbe sustains the momentum of the publishing scene.
Mary Noorlander, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from the United States
In a seasonal, virtual event from the Tertulia book co-op called the “First Dibs Salon,” readers from across the United States gather on Zoom to hear from the acquiring editors of notable forthcoming books. In the spring edition of this salon, editors presented four titles: Yoko by David Sheff (Simon & Schuster, March 25); Zeal by Morgan Jerkins (HarperCollins, April 22); The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien (W.W. Norton, May 6); and Gulf by Mo Ogrodnik (Summit Books, May 6).
I noticed that all but one editor placed a noticeable emphasis on the amount of research that went into their respective books, even though only one (Yoko) is categorized as nonfiction. There seems to be a relentless urge to slap “based on a true story” across every title, or at least across every fiction release that feels intimately close to—or even indistinguishable from—reality. The Book of Records was the exception that night, with the acquiring editor Jill Bialosky praising it as a “work of total imagination,” despite the novel being a very real commentary on climate change and displacement.
I’m not arguing that deeply researched, “true to life” stories don’t have their place in the literary landscape. The research that went into Zeal, a novel that explores the intergenerational trauma of slavery following emancipation, is for example fascinating and essential to the final text. The author, Morgan Jerkins, analyzed the migration patterns of Black people post-emancipation and studied Blues music to familiarize herself with the particular voice and dialect in which she was writing. That said, the demand for “true-to-life” fiction is a gatekeeper for more varied types of storytelling that modern publishing in the United States seems reluctant to push past.
A platform targeted towards serious readers looking for the up and coming and industry insights, Tertulia has emerged as an alternative to Goodreads, now that the latter platform has been swallowed up by Amazon. I’ve been making a slow shift from Goodreads to Tertulia throughout the past year, having been initially impressed with their focus on new and notable books in translation. Their “reading list” columns often feature translation-focused houses, including regular recommendations for books coming out of Europa Editions and other independent literary presses, and I’m hoping for more translated titles on their lists to come.
Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from North Macedonia
In the lull between major literary events, the momentum in the Macedonian literary scene is sustained by exciting new releases: The publishing house Ili-Ili recently released Prostuvanje (Forgiveness), a novel by German-Macedonian author, philosopher, and artist Kitsa Kolbe. In her newest work, Kolbe grapples with a wide spectrum of traumatic experiences—personal, generational, and intercultural. These experiences are refracted through the novel’s protagonist, a grandchild of Aegean refugees haunted by inexplicable nightmares about drowning. His healing process becomes a terrain where expression clashes with erasure: In order to free himself from his terrifying visions, he must unearth his own family history and its greater context, as well as face the descendants of politicians who had a direct role in the conflict that ravaged his grandparents’ lives.
Kolbe is intimately familiar with both the trauma and potentialities of immigration, herself the child of Aegean refugees fleeing from Greece to Yugoslavia following the Greek Civil War of 1946–1949. Kolbe describes the migratory heritage and experience as oscillating between loss and enrichment. Even as she mourns the loss of family history implied in becoming a refugee—“I admired my friends in my childhood who possessed old photos and old objects. We, the refugee children, did not have anything older than ourselves”—she credits her family’s hardships with her ability to appreciate the unknown: “…I was always yearning for the unknown since I didn’t know where I belonged. Today I think that the yearning for the world behind the border is deeply connected to my familial migratory heritage.”
Kolbe’s yearning for the unknown led her to move to Germany, where she started a family and “became a writer and painter.” She accentuates the role of the arts in allowing us to connect with a foreign culture and process the experiences of immigration. Initially comforted by her love for Beethoven’s music and Thomas Mann’s writing, she eventually came to feel that she “can be at home everywhere,” given the unlosable home she has found in her writing: “. . . literature is the protected space of the author. It is his imaginary patrimony without borders.”
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