Featured titles
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Translating Umberto Eco as Revolutions Erupt, by Elena Kostioukovitch (2026, NF)
Rights sold: Italy - LA NAVE DI TESEO
Translating Umberto Eco as Revolutions Erupt is at once a collective autobiography, an essay on translation, a journey into the creative heart of Umberto Eco, and a window into the cultural and political transformations of recent decades.
Elena Kostioukovitch weaves her own experiences as a translator with those of the colleagues who brought the works of the author of The Name of the Rose into various foreign languages. It begins with the gripping story behind that extraordinary debut novel: though published worldwide, it was opposed by the Soviet Communist Party for its "relativist" ideas, translated in secret, and only published in Russia in 1988 following Gorbachev’s reforms.
Through untold anecdotes, photographs, reflections on translation choices, and a careful reconstruction of the technological evolution that changed publishing forever, this volume rebuilds the dialogue between Eco and his translators—showing an author who was witty, occasionally obsessive about his texts, but always deeply human. Yet, it is also the story of a clash between cultures, of a censorship that spares no one, and of a changing Russia—from Soviet rigidity to fragile freedom, right up to present-day tensions—all observed through the lens of those translating a staunch pro-European.
This book is both a tribute and a firsthand testament to the creative workshop of a great author, serving as a companion piece to the reflections gathered by Eco himself in Experiences in Translation (Dire quasi la stessa cosa). It is an exploration of translation told firsthand by those tasked with the mission of recreating an entire literary universe.
Technical details: Original language - Italian, characters, words
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Ancestor, a novel by Vladimir Makanin (1982)
Rights sold: Germany - Volk u. Welt, Spain - Alfaguara, Marbot
A satirical vision of the Soviet Union at the times of the Thaw.
Central figure of Makanin´s Ancestor is Old Yakushkin, a healer who has the gift of curing the terminally ill pacients abandoned by official medicine. His healing methods cannot be less orthodox: he waits for the patient to have a crisis to yell at him, shake him, torment his spirit until all his resistance is broken. The satisfactory cure of the dying man is obtained on the basis of terrible speeches and very little food. With irony and pathos, wit and malice, Makanin introduces us to the feverish Yakushkin in all his heartbreaking spiritual evolution: a young playboy, he was accused of fraud and confined to a labor camp in Siberia, where by accident he discovered in himself a healing gift. Makanin's hero recalls the great protagonists of the classical Russian literature.
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