After six months or so of work my translation of Mathias Frey’s self-published political thriller EXCESS – The Art of Treason has now finally gone live on Kindle.
Translating a book by an indie author, with the translation also to be self-published has been quite a rollercoaster ride in a lot of ways. There’s been a lot to learn, a lot to do ourselves that normally a publisher would take on, and now there’s all the marketing to do, too. On the other hand, the opportunity to work so closely with the author has also been very rewarding and as with Amelia Ellis and her Nea Fox books, it’s great to be able to simply ask “what did you mean by this?” rather than having to go via the publisher, agent, or in the case of dead or uncooperative authors, ask around or just guess!
I would like to make it clear, however, that I don’t necessarily share the author’s political views. Especially on the subject of climate change…
Still, if you have a Kindle and are looking for a rollicking political, conspiracy thriller, check it out. If you would be so kind as to leave feedback on Amazon or Goodreads, that would also be positively marvellous. Thank you!
Excess by Mathias Frey, tr. Rachel Ward, 2013
An unsuspecting town in rural Texas.
An east coast billionaire with a mission.
An obscure Pentagon unit taking on a life of its own.
A President under siege.
A nation on the brink of collapse.
Only one man can see the web of deception, conspiracy and treason.
And he decides to act.
Related articles
- Excitements and Excess in Translation (adiscounttickettoeverywhere.wordpress.com)
a discount ticket to everywhere 
Interesting. With self-publishing taking such a huge role now, I always wonder how it works from a translator’s point of view, how to go about it, how self-publishing works and, even better, self-publishing a translation (have you or will you write a post about the ins and outs of it?? Or an ebook).
But what has had me most intrigued has been precisely that teensy little factor: that new relationship between writer and translator (or lack thereof as it used to be) because guess what the subject of my dissertation for my MA was?? I keep on meaning to one day pick up the copy from the shelves and re-read it but I’d probably hate what I wrote now, so many years later.
Hi Maria, I may come back to the subject, but don’t know when just yet.
If you don’t I may just have to buy you a coffee one day, my mind has been coming back to it, I find all these changes and developments fascinating.
I’m reading Excess based on a recommendation from Ken Timbers (an email pal of mine; we met on flickr. So he is biased but I am not.). I’m very impressed by your translation; I would never have guessed that the book wasn’t originally written in American English. I am curious about the author; did he live in the USA? Anyway, excellent translation and a very interesting book.
P.S. I’m American and live in L.A.
Thanks for your comment. That’s really encouraging about the US English as a lot of work went into making that authentic.
Pingback: On Working Directly with the Author | a discount ticket to everywhere