I’m a writer from the Balkans. Why do people assume I only know about war and tragedy? | Ana Schnabl

I Attended a conference of American writers in Texas, just before the world dived in COVVI-19 locking. Between the panels and the networking, I spent my time walking in the book fair, lenging in the titles and the sharp editors with questions.

“How many translated works are in your catalogs?” How do you discover authors from the outside of the United States? And how do you assess the quality of writing in the languages that you do not speak? ”

I was not only curious – I was on a mission. I wanted to know what type of work called on American publishers and if mine could arouse their interest. I did not bother to hide my ambition.

An answer remained with me, housed in my mind like a spore. He came from a representative of one of the largest American publishing houses. After explaining where I came from, using fashionable words like “the old Republic of northern Yugoslavia” and “not a war zone at the moment”, he offered this council:

“Think of stories and themes specific to your culture and the history of the place.”

“So,” I ventured, “not a story, let’s say, a woman who leaves her career in finance, divorces her husband and becomes a potter?”

“Well, if this story has also explored your cultural or historical problems, then yes.”

I felt an bite of embarrassment but I thanked it politely and I moved away. A coffee and a cigarette were suddenly essential.

In the years since then, I have come to understand why his words have irritated me so much. They exhibited a model – the one who always frustrates me.

For the authors of the Balkans and other European nations and countries in the world whose history and culture are a mystery of North Americans, the path of translated in English and published by American or British publishers often depends on the meeting of a tacit condition: our work must present a political or cultural context of our region, or at least pivot historical events. To succeed, he must have an explanatory or illustrative value – ideally with a suspicion of didacticism.

“American readers must find out about the place,” said the publisher.

At first glance, this expectation seems benign – reasonable, even. After all, the authors of the whole world, including those of the Balkans, reflect on their immediate political and cultural environment. Literature has always been a way to reflect, analyze and criticize society.

But the deeper involvement of this expectation is more disturbing. It is based on a tacit belief that the Balkans are a lesser place – a region that simmers forever with a tragedy potential. As the publisher said with frankly: “Take something culturally or historically problematic – or better, traumatic – would be interesting.”

By “traumatic”, did he imagine the atrocities of the Second World War or the Yugoslav wars? He imagined a region mired in poverty, inequalities and patriarchal traditions? Perhaps Balkan societies assumed that Balkan societies are only subject to violence or sadness. Perhaps he hoped stories of post-socialist disillusionment, perpetuating the idea that we always deal with the “trauma” of Yugoslav socialism.

I cannot say with certainty. What I know is this: he would not have been interested in a Balkan version of my year of rest and relaxation. A novel on a protagonist of the Balkans who is simply exhausted by capitalism, self-absorbed, angry or morally ambiguously would not manage to check the right boxes.

Unfortunately for him, he would probably have underlying the hybrid novel of the writer Slovenian Nataša Kramberger, who took over a Steria Slovenian farm, after his return from Berlin. And I suspect that he would not care much about the news of the Croatian Luiza Bouharaoua, who paints the anxiety and the joys of the millennials, although in the colors of the Adriatic. Ni for the poetry of the North Macedonian poet, Kalia Dimitrova, who likes to refer to Capri and Berlin but rarely to Skopje.

For a work of a Balkan author to succeed, his protagonist must be a victim – clear and unambiguous. Publishers prefer stories that arouse compassion, moral indignation, sorrow or, ideally, the three.

In short, we, the Balkan writers, must approach universal themes – sorrow, alienation, love, loss – through a closely regional lens. And that the objective must include a self-exotic turn.

To be clear, the Balkans is a specific region with unique cultural, political and historical complexities. Writers of this part of the world have a lot to say about it, and many do it brilliantly. But if translations in English are supposed to expand knowledge on “this place of the Balkans”, the publishers must be prepared to engage with stories that question the established perceptions.

The question is not whether Balkan writers should reflect their context. We often do it, of course. The question is whether the publishers will listen to the diversity of the emerging voices of the region – or if they will continue to favor the stories that perfectly strengthen their hypotheses.

After all, there is much more in the Balkans than in trauma, tragedy or tales adapted to teaching. There are also just stories exceptionally written on women who used to work in finance, left their husband and opened a pottery business. Some North American and British publishers have already supported such stories fully – hence the International Booker Prize by Georgi Gospodinov – and have thus fulfilled the mission of offering voices of various corners of the world to a global audience, not as ambassadors of their geography, but as tales of full -fledged tales. But many others have done it again.