This week we speak to Eric Lane from Dedalus Books about their Young Dedalus imprint, which brings translated books from around the world to young readers in the UK.

by Ruth Donnelly

Ruth Donnelly: Hi Eric, thank you for taking the time to speak with World Kid Lit. Could you start by telling us the story behind Dedalus?

Eric Lane: Dedalus started in 1983, and it came out of a writing course I attended in South London. I was hearing all this really high quality work read out in class, and yet no matter how good it was, they weren’t finding an agent or getting published. And I thought, there’s something wrong here. So I decided to start my own publishing company. It hasn’t always been easy – when we started Britain was just coming out of a recession, and we spent a lot of money on publicity, which was lost because of the NGA strikes. So our books didn’t always sell well, and we got labelled the “dead loss” publishers, which was embarrassing. We had to relaunch a few times, which didn’t always work, but the last time we did a stunt where we carried a coffin (one of our authors was an undertaker) to the steps of Time Out in Covent Garden, and a model jumped out, to represent the “rebirth of fiction”. Local television came along, and a few photographers, and shortly after that we started getting our first reviews. This was for a book called The Arabian Nightmare, by Robert Irwin, and the reviews were incredibly good, so I sent those to the broadsheets, who also gave it rave reviews, and then we started getting some interest from the big publishing houses, and things took off from there.

RD: Wow, that’s quite the comeback. And have you published translated fiction from the start?

EL: No, it was actually Robert Irwin who suggested our first translation, and that was an early twentieth century European fantasy, which was a success. We published our first contemporary European translation in 1991, and there was a very mixed reaction – the Sunday Times wrote an article about the Arts Council wasting their money on translated books, and they included our books in the article, saying funding translated fiction was a waste of time. In those days you could count the publishers doing translated books on one hand. Compare that to now, when nearly all the major houses do translations. The idea of the Sunday Times saying it’s a waste of time is unthinkable. From nowhere, translated fiction has become, not centre stage exactly, but it’s no longer in the shadows. So for us, it’s not that we’re unique because we publish translated fiction, but because we publish the kind of books in translation that no one else will touch. Last year we published an anthology from Faroese, and it took us three years, three translators, innumerable problems. When you do things from minority languages it tends to be more difficult, but we do it because we love it.

RD: That’s really great to hear. So when did the idea for Young Dedalus come about?

EL: It was actually my son Timothy’s idea. He reads a lot of children’s books, and he really pushed for us to start doing children’s fiction. Most of what he reads is in translation, so we thought what we could do is to start a children’s list, but have it anchored in what we already do. So in 2020 we launched Young Dedalus, which has started off as purely children’s fiction in translation. What we want to do is develop a basic core, based on what we already know, and then at some stage diversify out to become a complete publisher of children’s fiction. So Timothy heads up Young Dedalus, he’s the editor and he makes the final decisions on what we publish. The aim in the future is for it to become a standalone imprint.

RD: How refreshing to find a publisher so dedicated to translated kid lit! What’s the process for choosing which books to publish? Do you have a preference for particular languages or settings?

EL: No, we’re open to translations from anywhere in the world. To begin with, we asked some of our regular translators, are there any children’s books you would particularly like to translate, and Margaret Jull Costa mentioned Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, who is one of Portugal’s most acclaimed children’s authors, almost the equivalent of Hans Christian Anderson. So we published a collection of traditional Portuguese children’s stories, written by her and translated by Margaret Jull Costa, The Girl from the Sea and Other Stories. And then we decided to go for something more contemporary, with a series of books by the Swedish author, Karin Erlandsson, the first of which is The Pearl Whisperer (translated by A.A. Prime). It’s a sort of quest fantasy, from a feminine perspective. Most of the major characters are girls, and of course they’re doing the same sorts of things male characters might do, but the big difference is the importance of friendship – there’s this very real friendship between these two girls. It’s not idealised, they’re not perfect, and there’s quite a dark side to the story, but the friendship between the two main characters is what’s at the heart of the story. And although the books are loosely aimed at children aged between 9-13, there’s really no limit on who might enjoy them. I love them, my wife loves them, they’re just great books.

RD: They sound fascinating, and it’s lovely to hear that you publish such a wide range of genres. Is there any theme that you would say unites your children’s titles?

EL: Yes, at the moment most things have an element of fantasy, because although it’s difficult to predict what will make a book a success, we do know what we like, and often the fantasy titles are the ones we all enjoy. But we’re always open to what we consider well-written narratives, not overly moralistic, and often featuring some sort of quest. So for example, in Nobody Can Stop Don Carlo, a translation from German (by Deirdre McMahon) that we published in 2020, there’s this boy whose parents split up, he lives with his mother and the father moves to Palermo. Despite promises, the father never comes to visit his son, so eventually the kid takes it upon himself to go to Palermo. He’s got no money, so the whole trip is an adventure, and then he manages to get there only to find the father has a new partner, a new life. So it’s not a happy ending, but it’s a quest – it’s the journey that’s interesting.

RD: And continuing the quest theme, your latest children’s book is Rudiger Bertram’s The Path, translated by World Kid Lit’s very own Claire Storey – can you tell us a bit more about that one?

EL: Yes, we were delighted to be able to work with Claire, she’s a real asset to the translated children’s literature industry, she’s full of ideas and energy. We had previously just missed out on another book suggested by her, a South American saga, so when she came to us with this one we leapt at the chance. And what I really love about The Path is that, again, it doesn’t have a happy ending, per se, but it presents a situation that’s very true to life. It’s about a family that has to escape Germany during WWII, and they set off on foot to go to Spain, but the little boy insists on taking his dog. And then they’re in the mountains and the German police are there, so they hide, but the dog won’t stop barking. And rather than let them all get discovered, the father goes out alone, and we never hear from him again. So the boy has to live with that for the rest of his life, that his father is gone because of his insistence on taking the dog. It’s not overly moralistic, it’s not done in tomato ketchup, but it’s there.

RD: What does the future hold for Young Dedalus?

EL: The aim is for it to stand alone as a children’s publishing imprint. I still remember reading books as a child and they opened up a vast new world. It’s like your horizon expands, and it leaves you marked in some way. This is what I want for young readers, for them to get that sort of joy and enrichment that I got from reading. We’re very open to submissions from translators, and we’re happy to work with people who haven’t published before. What we want are good stories, from anywhere in the world.

RD: Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us, Eric.

EL: Thank you, it’s been nice talking to you.

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