Fitzcarraldo

Pictured above are the seven books published by Fitzcarraldo Editions that are currently at home on my shelves. An eighth (Mathias Énard’s The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild) is on the ‘to be read’ pile). Another four or five have come & gone. The first one I acquired was Camilla Grudova’s wonderful short-story collection The Doll’s Alphabet.

Fitzcarraldo have brought a breath of fresh air to British publishing with their steadfast endorsement of quality literature in translation. By the expedient of publishing excellent authors previously un- or under-represented in English, their list now includes four Nobel prizewinners. As well as the high quality of the texts, I very much like the consistent simplicity of their jacket designs.

I don’t always find the interior design of their volumes as pleasing, but it usually works well enough. One mis-step (in my opinion) was their ungainly edition of Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob, too hefty a tome that would have been much better subdivided into two or three volumes. I’ve my eye on a few more of their titles and look forward to seeing what else they come up with!