March events

March 12 is the date of my reading and signing of "Becoming George Sand" at the Voltaire bookshop in Key West. I'll also be signing at the Harrison Gallery on White Street on Thursday March 17th - St. Patrick's Day - Walk on White.  My Scottish heroine's younger lover is Irish - a coincidence? - and March 17 is the official publication date in the US.
Earlier this week I received the Italian version from Piemme, Milan, Italy.  It's called "L'amante di Chopin" - Chopin's lover.  I was a little surprised at first, as the book is about George Sand, not him - but hey, it's a great title, and I hope will sell books in Italy. George Sand had many men in her life, of whom Chopin was one of the most famous. It wasn't a happy love affair, but they did, for several years, love each other and always appreciated each other's work, so the whole thing wasn't a disaster.
The Italian version flows beautifully and I'm struck again by the magic of translation: the book appears in a new form, with a new sensibility, it seems.  I imagine unknown Italians reading it, savoring it, and I feel a connection with another culture, curiously intimate, completely surprising.  Thankyou, Piemme, and thankyou Maria Clara Pasetti for your inspired and diligent work. The alchemy of translation: how limited our knowledge of literature would be without it. How little we'd know of other cultures; how limited we would be as people if we had never read Chekhov, or Proust. If we never saw films with sub-titles, translated from languages we do not recognize.  So, this blog is for translators, who never get enough praise, it seems to me.
  If you're in Key West, see you at Voltaire on March 12, and at Helen Harrison's beautiful gallery on March 17.  If not - well, be there in spirit and online!
 

Book Publication

This month my novel "Becoming George Sand" is being published in the US.  It came out in Canada in 2009 and I was eagerly awaiting the US edition.  A few days ago, there it was in a ragged envelope lying on my doorstep, presumably thrown there by the UPS guy; I tore it open and there was my book, in paperback, with its gorgeous red and green cover of a sultry-looking woman and with appreciative comments by writers I admire.  This is always a great moment for any writer.  You want to open a bottle of champagne on the spot, but I did manage to control myself until the next evening, when I opened a bottle for three friends and my daughter and me, to toast the arrival - at last - of "Becoming George Sand" as a US novel.