Tim Parks (1)

Our second Literary Friendships event will bring together Tim Parks and Peter Stamm in conversation. Described by the New Yorker as one of Europe’s most exciting writers, Swiss writer Peter Stamm’s novel, Seven Years, translated by Michael Hofmann, has been called an existentialist classic in the making.

Stamm himself says, ‘It has always been my goal to make literature out of ordinary people’s lives. I don’t like the extremes; I don’t think that they teach us much about ourselves.’

Tim Parks on Peter Stamm:
‘Peter Stamm is one of the authors I have enjoyed most over recent years. His quiet, laconic voice and his characters torn between a thirst for life and a fear of involvement are convincing, disturbing, always entertaining.’

Peter Stamm on Tim Parks:
‘Nationality never mattered to me when it came to literature. When I started writing, I was highly influenced by English and American authors. Later came writers from France, Italy and Russia. I think there are writer families, authors who are interested in the same questions and have the same goals in their work. I first "met" Tim Parks, when he was writing about my books and immediately had the feeling, he knew what they were all about. Only afterwards I started to read his work and had the feeling that we were - with all differences - on a similar quest.’

Peter Stamm was born in 1963, in Weinfelden, Switzerland. He is the author of the novels Agnes, Unformed Landscape, On A Day Like This and Seven Years. He has published four collections of short stories and has written numerous plays, radio plays and three books for children. His books have been translated into 36 languages. He lives with his family in Winterthur, near Zürich.

Born in Manchester in 1954, Tim Parks studied at Cambridge and Harvard before moving permanently to Italy in 1981. Author of three bestselling books on Italy, and fifteen novels, including the Booker short-listed Europa, and most recently The Server, he has translated works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso and Machiavelli. While running a post-graduate degree course in translation at IULM University, Milan, he writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the NYRB. His non-fiction works include Translating Style, a literary approach to translation problems, Medici Money, an account of the relation between banking, the Church and art in the 15th century, and Teach Us to Sit Still, which was described by David Lodge as: “A searingly honest, viscerally vivid, darkly comic self-examination of the connections between writing, personality and health.” (MDGentleReader)… (més)

Tim Parks

The art of literary translation is at the heart of World Literature Weekend. This will be marked in the 2011 festival through a programme of workshops led by a team of Britain’s most distinguished literary translators. This half-day workshop led by Tim Parks focuses on the Italian language and will be structured around close work on texts sent in advance to participants. Discussion will centre on the differences in approach evident in variant translations of the same texts. Participants should have a good working knowledge of the language and will be invited to prepare their own translations of the texts under discussion. Novelist, essayist, translator and teacher, Tim Parks has lived and worked in Italy since 1981. His many translations from the Italian include works by Moravia, Tabucchi, Calvino, Calasso and most recently Machiavelli (The Prince). He has written widely (in both English and Italian) on the subject of translation and his book Translating Style (St Jerome Press) is an unusual attempt to fuse literary criticism with translation analysis. For more than a decade he has run a post-graduate degree on translation at IULM University, Milan. Workshop fee £65 (£40 concessions). To book two workshops at the discounted prices of £110 (£70 concessions) please call Claire Williams on 020 7269 9030. (FlossieT)… (més)