"These were places that had amazing stories to tell and hadn’t been told." An interview with Susan Curtis Editor of Istros Books

Recently two of the best Turkish books that have been translated and published in English have come from the same publishing house. Istros Books which makes it its business to try to bring great literature from the Balkans and Turkey out in English. I jumped on a zoom call with its founder and editor Susan Curtis to talk about the state of the publishing industry and Balkan literature. 

Luke: Could you start by telling me a bit about yourself, your background and your journey into publishing. 

Susan: I studied literature. I worked as a teacher, but I was always interested in books. I also wrote and when I was living in Croatia from 2005-2011 I became much more familiar with the literature there and the region: Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and the region. I started to pick up books from authors there and attend events. I started to understand that there was hardly anything in English. Whereas people would be talking about these writers and referencing them, there was so little. So when we were leaving Croatia and coming back to Britain, I had had enough of teaching so I thought, “I can do something with literature.” So a bit like Amy [Spangler], I thought about becoming an agent, but then I thought I really should be part of the creative process so publishing seemed more interesting to me because you’re not just selling on other peoples work, but you have a hand in it and a hand in what gets chosen. Yes, it is more challenging and takes more time and money, but it is more satisfying for me. 

Luke: So are you a translator? Were you able to do your own translation? 

Susan: Yes. I had done some translation. So the first few books that I published were things that I translated. 

Luke: Yeah, it keeps the costs down. 

Susan: Exactly. When it comes to novels, I’m too lazy and too busy to do a whole novel. So those two things were poetry. These days I don’t really do the translation of novels. It is quite a job. 

Luke: For sure, I know plenty of translators and it is impressive how much they work for not huge amounts of money. 

Susan: Absolutely and most translators have other jobs such as working in academia. However, I have to say that I have got grants from English Pen and they insist on the highest rates and it is not bad. 

Luke: So you were living in the Balkans in Croatia what was it about the literature of those countries that made you want to publish them?

Susan: The thing is, I understood from living there and having lots of friends there, understanding the recent history and travelling a lot, that these were places that had amazing stories to tell and hadn’t been told. The genesis of how these countries evolved even over the last hundred years is fascinating. You’ve got all kinds of things going on, all kinds of strands coming together, then you have the second world war, communism, and the collapse of the old empires. I knew that there were all these amazing stories and cultures intermingling. That is what interested me. 

Luke: Is there one or two particular books you really thought needed to be bought into English from the beginning? 

Susan: Yeah, so when I was starting, I asked the advice of a friend of mine who worked in a cultural centre in Zagreb. That cultural centre was always doing interregional cultural events. She had a good overview of what was going on and gave me a list of five or six books. She said, “you want these.” 

I managed to get three of the authors and the authors I didn’t get at the time was Daša Drndić, who turned out to have great success with her novel Trieste and went on to write Belladonna. Over the past decade, her reputation has grown hugely and she is now very widely respected in the English-speaking world. Although, she died a couple of years ago. The person who gave me those recommendations was very good. I was well advised by her. She recommended two Montenegrin writers, a Bosnian writer, and Daša from Croatia. That was a big coup. One of them, Seven Terrors by Selvedin Avdić, turned out to be a success because a couple of years after it was published one of the lead reviewers in The Guardian chose it as his paperback of the year. It is an amazing book. 

Luke: Given that there are all these incredible books that you are bringing into English, why weren’t people translating these books before? 

Susan: There was a publisher called Autumn Hill Books who was doing it for a while, there was a publisher in Italy who was doing it. I believe there is another Italian company that does it into Italian. I think that in terms of England and the Anglo Saxon world, our publishing world is driven by profit, it is not subsidised by anybody or any ministry of culture, there are no book agreements in place, so in France and Germany, there are agreements that stop books being discounted by a certain amount. Whereas in Britain and American it is all open marked, books are sold 50-60% discounted. Because of that, publishing is very profit-driven and about sales and not about quality and high literature. 

 Luke: I always remember Allan Moore saying, that good writers were struggling to get published because UK publishers would rather publish a biography of The Stig.

Susan: Well there you go. Because that is the mentality, because it is driven by big discounts and high sales, blockbusters and bestsellers, I don’t think that in the Anglo-Saxon world publishers who are unknown, people with unusual names, people who come from small countries and on top of that is the huge cost of transition. Yes, it is not a huge cost if you sell a million copies. But if you sell a thousand, you’re never going to make that money back. 

Luke: This is what I hear constantly from literary agents in Turkey, that big publishers in England aren’t willing to take risks on Turkish novelists. They’ve had their successes for sure, but they are also struggling to convince people to buy Turkish novels. 

Susan: It is a risk, but also you know because we are a tokenist society, we like to put everybody in pigeon wholes. There is an attitude that “the English market has two Turkish novelists, Elif Şafak and Orhan Pamuk so why would we need more? We’ve got two. A man and woman, that’s great and we are not going to think about any others.” It seems to me that it is lazy and unadventurous. I’m not sure if you’ve been to the London book fair, but there are these huge American and English publishers there to sell their rights all over the world —that’s how they make their money—selling their big sellers into every other language in the world and yet they are not willing to return the favour.

Luke: It is an Anglo-sphere problem. 

Susan: It is. 

Luke: I understand that if you are trying to sell into say German or French, it is much easier despite those being smaller markets. 

Susan: It is. Also because they are subsidised with agreements in place and they have more money to play with, they are more interested in literature for literature’s sake. 

Luke: So getting into the nitty-gritty of your business then. If it is difficult to sell novels from countries that don’t spring to mind with the reading public, how does your business work? 

Susan: It is based on grants. I never do a book unless I have a grant to cover at least the translation. So I have to have the translation covered and some money for production as well. 

Luke: Explain to me how that works. Who do you go to for a grant? 

Susan: So in Turkey, all praise to the Ministry of Culture. It is probably the easiest system of anyone I work with. So in terms of a Turkish book, it is really easy to do, it doesn’t take long. You send it to the TEDA program. The system is very streamlined with a focus on results rather than justifying costs, which makes it a joy for publishers. We don’t have time to jump through a lot of hoops for very little money in terms of the state’s budget. 

Luke: That’s really interesting. I don’t think I’d realised that the money was coming from the Turkish government. I assumed that the money would come from some UK charitable or government fund. 

Susan:  We do also get Arts Council money—not all the time but sometimes. Turkey has a fund for publishing books, so does Serbia and Romania. However, many other countries don't have a fund so I have to apply to other places and then there are different rules different forms. Arts Council is very good, they keep the process streamlined and more efficient which makes applying on a project by project basis fairly easy to handle in terms of paperwork and reporting.

Luke: How are your sales doing? Are you able to move a reasonable volume of these books? Is it difficult to get them in the book shops? 

Susan: It is difficult. If I sell a thousand, I’m happy. I’d like to sell more, but I would be happy with that. I think the thing that people don’t realise is English is only the first step, but it is an important step because once you have got it in English that means, number one: any editor in any publishing house all over the world can read that book, but before they couldn’t. Number two: they can use it to translate from. I know that isn’t the perfect scenario, but it is quite a good scenario, you can use it as a bridge language. I’ve got many books that I have published that have gone on to be published in Arabic or Turkish. 

Luke: Do you find that writers who have been published in English for the first time by you are able to graduate to bigger houses? 

Susan: None of them have done that yet. Though I published a Slovenian writer and I believe due to that he got published by France by Gallimard which is a huge honour. I don’t suppose that would have happened if they hadn’t got the English version so it does help. I haven’t had any of my authors go on to bigger British publishers yet.    

Luke: You have published two Turkish novels so far. 

Susan: Two novels and two collections of short stories. 

Luke: Yes, what drew you to those novels? 

Susan: When it comes to novels from the former Yugoslavia because I speak Serbo-Croatian, it is easier for me because I can read the originals. When it comes to languages like Bulgarian or Turkish I have to rely on agents or translators -for example, somebody like Nermi Mollaoğlu who is a great advocate for Turkish literature. So I published Çiler Ilhan and Ayfer Tunç they were through Nermin and Kalem Agency. So she gave me a synopsis and a sample translation we talked about it. With Çiler, the collection was an EU prize-winner so that was a bonus. Most of the books I publish if they are not from a well-known writer then they are a prize winner. Then I published Ayfer’s novel. 

Luke: I loved the hell out of that book. 

Susan: It was an amazing book, an incredible piece of work. I published her because I’d heard about that book. The translator Feyza Howell was a big big fan so she had been going on about this book for years. Eventually, I was like, “ok let’s do it.” She also bought be Snapping Point. Feyza was very keen on Snapping Point and she convinced me. I have to say, once I had the full translation I was enchanted. I thought it was a beautiful book. I don’t know what you thought of it. 

Luke: Yeah it was nice. For me personally, enjoyed it but I'm a big sci-fi fantasy fan reader and when I read about an island floating around the Mediterranean I was hoping for something more audacious, more gonzo. 

Susan: It is quite a gentle book. It was something a bit different about people as opposed to being about Turkey. 

Luke:  Yes, This is something that I think about and I can’t remember who told me this, but they said that publishers are looking for Turkish books that say something about Turkey. The idea that you might sell a story that is not explicitly “about” that nation is something the publishing industry needs to get over. 

Susan: That’s true. I always say that I publish books that do have that element right. Sometimes I say to authors that it would be better for you if you didn’t get published by a specialist in Balkan literature because you don’t want to be pigeonholed like that. I can understand that because I am that and I advertise as that I do have to think about it. It is very difficult to publish a Slovenian writer who has written about New Zealand. People wouldn’t be happy or expect it. I probably wouldn't consider it because I need to keep my focus on the region and publish books that explore or explain the region to interested English-speaking readers 

Luke: I remember a while ago I was interviewing Amy Spangler about this and she was trying to sell a book called The Woman in Red, which is by a Turkish writer but is set in Latin America. The response she got from publishers was, “Why would I publish a book by a Turkish person about Latin America?” But those same publishing houses would publish an English person or American writer on Latin America. 

Susan: Yes, yes. I think that is very true. For example, it works in the sense that if a British person gave them a novel about  Latin America they might say, “where is the English character in the story?” They are also looking for that kind of Englishman abroad thing. There is a bit of colonialism in there. 

Luke: I’d like to pivot away from the industry towards literature. What are the books you’ve published that you are particularly proud of? 

Susan: Well I mentioned Daša Drndić before. I published one of her early novels Dopulganga. I am proud of doing that because it was her favourite novel. Because she was ill, I particularly wanted to do it before she passed away, because she was very ill, and managed to do that. It is a great title to have on my list because her reputation has just grown and grown and grown. Also published the first two unpublished novels of the Romanian writer Mircea Eliade who’s really quite a towering figure of 20th-century intellectualism. Those two works—one which he wrote when he was seventeen and the other when he was twenty-one in 1920s Romania—those two books weren’t published in his lifetime and certainly not in English. It was a real coup to get those. I am really proud of Madhouse. It was a huge venture. I think the translator completed a massive task brilliantly, and that she was able to convey all the subtleties of the text and dialect., don’t you?

Luke: I do, it is an extremely dense book. It must have been a real nightmare to translate. There is so much going on there. I write fiction myself and I really struggle to see how that book was written or translated.

Susan: I think it is an incredible work of art. Also, I think that you really have to let go of your need for a plot. I kept thinking at the beginning why are we moving to another character. Once you have learned how to swim in her universe you start to enjoy it. I like to think, to hope, that that book will gain a readership, will gain an audience, just through hearsay, just because it is a bloody good book. It is very rooted in Turkey and the history of Turkey. It has everything people want. I think that a lot of the books I publish are playing the long game. I’m not going to get a bestseller tomorrow. I just hope that because some of them are really special books they will bubble below the surface and become known.

Luke: For somebody like me who doesn’t know much about Balkan literature what are some good starting points? 

Susan: Starting with former Yugoslavia stuff, there is a very popular Slovenian writer whose name is Goran Vojnović. He wrote a book called Yugoslavia my Fatherland. I always recommend it and I think when it was reviewed in the Irish Times the review said that the book should be on every schoolchild’s reading list in order to understand what happened in that country and why it broke down. It is a very clever book where the microcosm of this boy’s family reflects the macrocosm of what is happening to the country as it disintegrates. It gives many different points of view: political, social, military. It is very good at explaining what happened in a very complicated situation. I would recommend that book. There are also some excellent Croatian writers. I publish a writer called Olja Savičević from Split. You almost feel the Dalmatian heat when you’re reading them. I published a Romanian book which is called Life Begins. That is a book that is set at the turn of the century 1900s in Bucharest. That is a beautiful book for putting Romania in its context just as Romania was becoming a modern European state, full of enthusiasm for science and the future of humanity. Çiler Ilhan’s Exile, that is a book that keeps on selling. It’s really about the position of women in Turkish society, their predicaments and suffering. 

Luke: Thank you very much for joining me. Is there anything else you’d like to mention that you feel I haven’t touched on here? 

Susan: I think it is worth mentioning your Turkish heroines: Nermin Mollaoglu, Feyza Howell, Amy Spangler. I think that their dedication to the cause has really made a difference. 

Luke: Thanks again for joining me.