A Quote by Laila Lalami
There is a insularity within American fiction even for adults. It's very tough for books in translation in the US.
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Without books we're a very uneducated society. Think of the places books have taken us, the people we've been introduced to (fiction or non-fiction) and how books have allowed us to broaden our vocabulary.
Visit any bookshop in Europe, and the shelves are filled with English novels and non-fiction books in translation - while British bookshops stock mainly English and American works.
Giving with glad and generous hearts has a way of routing out the tough old miser within us. Even the poor need to know that they can give. Just the very act of letting go of money, or some other treasure, does something within us. It destroys the demon greed.
I find Japanese books quite baffling when I read them in translation. It's only with Haruki Murakami that I find Japanse fiction that I can understand and relate to. He's a very international writer.
Chinese readers are buying books in translation, particularly non-fiction about China, in large numbers.
I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle.
The Englishman's strong point is his vigorous insularity; that of the American his power of adaptation. Each of these attitudes has its perils. The Englishman stands firmly on his feet, but he who merely does this never advances. The American's disposition is to step forward even at the risk of a fall.
When you write for children and young adults, you have much more affect and influence on them than when you write for adults. The books that get us through our childhood stay with us for life.
There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.
Evidently, there are many great American writers. But sometimes it can feel as though American fiction is dominated by relatively linear narrative form, with a heavy emphasis on psychological realism. If you limit yourself to a certain kind of American literary fiction, it's easy to forget about the different kinds of books that are being written. You can forget to be ambitious, both as a reader and a writer.
I think it's important to humanize history; fiction can help us remember. A lot of books I've read in the past have been so much more important than textbooks - there is an emotional connection with one particular person. I'm very much of a research-is-important type of fiction writer, even for contemporary fiction. I wrote about blogs in America and I've never blogged. But I read many, many blogs - usually about feminist things, or about race, or about hair.
My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
China lacks good science fiction, but not mediocre science fiction. Even so, the gap between Chinese and American sci-fi is still very large and it is most apparent in quality of the works.
I read a couple of books a week. About 80 percent of what I read is contemporary literature for adults. The other 20 percent is made up of non-fiction and children's books.
The act of choosing what to place in your piece when you're a historian or a non-fiction writer already renders it into fiction for someone else. In some ways fiction comes a lot closer to reality. When you start talking about something as brutal as slavery and life in the American West, it's really important to take a non- judgmental stance. We romanticize a great deal about life in the American West, but I thank God I wasn't living during that time. No matter what color you were, it was rough, crude, tough living.
The oldest cliché in the world is about "what's lost in translation," but you don't very often read much intelligent about what's gained by translation, and the answer is everything. Our language is a compendium of translation.
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