Yesterday, Pearson’s African Writers Series signed on Amir Tag al-Sir‘s صائد اليرقات, translated by William Hutchins as The Grub Hunter.
It is slated to be published next spring.
The critically acclaimed novel, which earned the Sudanese novelist a spot on last year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction shortlist, has been excerpted lately in Words Without Borders and Banipal magazine. The WWB excerpt is available free online.
The African Writers Series began, under Heinemann, in 1962, and published great writers like Egyptian Alifa Rifaat, Nigerian Chinua Achebe, and Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o. The series lapsed, but was picked up by Pearson in the spring of 2008.
Pearson is in the main an educational publisher, and some critics complained when the initial list of new books included nothing “new”; the Guardian noted that all the series’ “new” titles were more than 15 years old.
Not so with The Grub Hunter, of course, which was published in Arabic in 2010 by منشورات الاختلاف، ثقافة للنشر والتوزيع. And indeed, according to the Pearson website (translators, your attention here) they continue to look for fresh submissions from African authors.
