In our Book Club selection for January, we were thrilled to present Alina Bronsky’s brilliantly comic and irreverent My Grandmother’s Braid, a study of familial dysfunctions that renders its players in all their idiosyncratic fascinations. Now, Assistant Editor Barbara Halla talks with Bronsky’s translator, Tim Mohr, about his intimate connections to Germany and its language, the German tradition of immigrant literature, and the challenges of rendering Bronsky’s surprising and intuitive narration.
The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page!
Barbara Halla (BH): You have a longstanding relationship with Alina Bronsky, having translated five of her books. Could you speak a little bit about how you came across her work and what inspired you to translate her?
Tim Mohr (TM): Her first book, Broken Glass Park, was either my second or third translation. It came after I attended a speech at Carnegie Hall, under the auspices of a festival called Berlin Lights. I sat in the audience to watch these ostensible experts speak on the German publishing world, and they claimed there was no tradition of immigrant literature there.
I remember thinking that the last ten German novels I’d read were all by what you might call “immigrant” writers, or writers writing in German as a second language. I was really adamant about working in that field and trying to get more of that material into the U.S. market, so people would be aware that this tradition did exist over there, and that it was booming. And then I came across Alina. I loved her debut novel, Broken Glass Park, and because the translation went well, we wanted to continue working together. I wouldn’t want another one of her books to come out with a different translator.
As far as our relationship goes, I tend not to work closely with the authors when I’m translating, and a lot of them speak really, really good English, so it’s all the more daunting in some ways—I don’t want them to be looking over my shoulder, basically! I’ll email them a few queries sometimes, but for the most part, I’m trying to do it on my own. I am somewhat friendly with Alina, but when we get together we don’t really talk about translation or her books, we just have a cup of coffee or something.
BH: I find it very interesting that you mentioned this idea of there being a tradition of immigrant writers in Germany, because one of the books I’ve enjoyed the most in the past few years is The Eighth Life, from Georgian/German writer Nino Haratischwili. How do you think Alina’s body of work fits into this tradition?
TM: There was a book called Russian Disco, written by Wladimir Kaminer, that came out in the late nineties, and it was a huge commercial success. It was kind of a compendium of stories, and it sold a couple million copies in Germany alone. I think that was one of the things that caused the boom to really take off. So Alina fits, I would think, in the mold of that first generation of refugees—you know, ex-Soviet, ex-Russian emigres. And Kaminer was the same; he left the Soviet Union at the end of the eighties, I guess. Alina was part of that initial wave, which has continued to broaden and expand. She was very young, too; I think she came to Germany when she was maybe ten years old.
BH: To go a bit more in detail into My Grandmother’s Braid, did you run into any challenges insofar as translating the text? I was particularly wondering about the dark humor.
TM: Yes, she has such a sharp, dark sense of humor in all of her books. That’s always been something of a challenge, because you don’t want to diminish it or make it too obvious. The trick is to try to do the same thing she’s doing, where you just sort of run across the text and realize you’re laughing and you’re not sure you’re supposed to be laughing. I’m working on a book now by a Swiss writer that does the same thing. Each sentence is kind of like a dagger; it has this humor that also hurts you as you’re laughing, and I think a lot of Alina’s work is that way too.
BH: Definitely. I think for me the most unexpected element is that there’s this affair unfolding in the background, and Max both understands and doesn’t understand because he’s still so young. And you’re just expecting everything to sort of fall apart, but it doesn’t.
TM: Right! When you watch Titanic you know what’s going to happen, right? And you feel like that at the beginning of this novel, too—like it’s gonna go down. And then Alina explodes your expectations.
BH: Another element that I found very interesting is that there’s a lot going on in the primary story, the primary plot, but then, if you’re paying attention, if you’re reading very carefully, you can see that there’s a lot going on in the background as well. Do you find that this is something that Alina does in her other novels as well?
TM: I was flipping through some of her past novels before this, and yes, it’s true that her world expands beyond the margins; there’s the world that she’s telling in detail, and then there’s all this other stuff just outside of the lens. It’s definitely true. I do think that’s one of the things which really makes all of her novels richer. You realize there’s stuff going on just outside of view.
BH: I’d like to touch on your own writing for a moment. I read that your book on the history of the East German punk scene, Burning Down the Haus, was first published in German. Did you originally write it in German?
TM: It’s a very odd story. I wrote it in English, since I meant it for English-speaking readers, but the rights were sold in German, and through a series of events, it ended up being published in its translated version first. It was an odd project, because every source I used was German, whether it was the Stasi Archives or all the interviews I did, and yet, I didn’t think I could accomplish what I wanted stylistically in German, so I translated all my material and wrote it in English.
And actually, interestingly enough, that book was very much influenced by my translation career. You always struggle to find the right voice to tell a story, even with nonfiction, and there was one chapter that I had all the material for fairly early on, but I kept writing and rewriting that chapter, trying to work on the voices. What turned the key for me was working on Stefanie de Velasco’s novel Tiger Milk, which had this kind of breathless, hyper-musical language to it. It took me a while to get her voice right in translation, and when I did, I realized that I should aim for that in my own writing. It wasn’t that I used the music of her book, but I was able to bring that musicality more into the language I was using. And then I wrote that chapter, and it worked, so by the time I had all the material for the rest of the book, I wrote it straight through in two months—it was ten years of research and then two months of writing. So translation was phenomenally helpful in that sense.
BH: You know, it’s interesting that you say that, because I was actually wondering if your proximity to the German culture and language had helped you in your work as a translator.
TM: Yes, it’s the only reason I’m a translator. When I moved to Berlin two years after the unification, fresh out of college, I didn’t speak German. I just learned it from working at the clubs; I never took classes. But one of the things about German that helps you learn it is that once you know what letters make what sound, it’s really easy to read, because unlike English, it’s dead consistent. So once I could speak it, I could pretty much read it.
And then, when I came back to the US after spending the nineties as a club DJ, I was sort of obsessed with Berlin. These days, Berlin is almost so cool that it’s not cool anymore, but back then nobody really knew anything about it. I would go around telling people about this great scene that was developing there, music-wise, art-wise, and I assumed literature would come as well. And people would just look at me with a blank stare. So I wanted to contribute to the flow of information between both places.
I was doing sample translations and reader reports for the German Book Office, which is a little office that helps German publishers to sell rights to English-language publishers, and through that, I started translating. I didn’t really set out to translate a full book, but then, through the German book office, I ended up doing Dorothea Dieckmann’s Guantanamo. That was the very first book that I translated, and because of the topic and the timing and everything else—and because the language of that book was really suited to my skills (there was a sort of charming musicality to the language)—it got an inordinate amount of attention for an indie press book in translation. At that point, I realized I could keep doing it, and then Charlotte Roche and Alina Bronsky came along.
So it’s only because I lived in Germany during that time that I now translate. And it’s not only because I learned the language, but also because I had this impulse, almost like a sense of obligation to a place that had completely changed my life and way of thinking. I was obsessed with paying back the city and the culture. And that’s how it came about.
Tim Mohr is an award-winning literary translator of German writers such as Stefanie de Velasco, Wolfgang Herrndorf, and Charlotte Roche, and has translated all five of Alina Bronsky’s novels. He is also the author of Burning Down the Haus, a history of East German punk rock and the role dissident musicians played in bringing down the Berlin Wall. In addition, he has collaborated on best-selling memoirs by musicians Gil Scott-Heron, Duff McKagan of Guns n’ Roses, and Paul Stanley of KISS. His work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Playboy, and New York, among other publications. Prior to starting his writing career he earned his living as a club DJ in Berlin.
Barbara Halla is an assistant editor for Asymptote, where she has covered Albanian and French literature and the Booker International Prize. She works as a translator and independent researcher, focusing in particular on discovering and promoting the works of contemporary and classic Albanian women writers. Barbara holds a BA in History from Harvard and has lived in Cambridge, Paris, and Tirana.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: