Young Romanian novelists in Spain

Award-winning author Tatiana Tibuleac

Corina Sabău, 20.02.2021, 14:00

The Spanish version of The summer when my mother’s
eyes were green, a novel by Tatiana Tibuleac, brought out by the Impedimenta
Publishers in 2019, scooped the Casino de Santiago European Novel Award.
Spanish academic and writer Marian Ochoa de Eribe is the translator of the
novel. Works by Eric Vuillard, Paolo Giordano and Pedro Feijo have also been
included on the Award’s shortlist. Previously, recipients of the Casino de
Santiago European Novel Award were Jonathan Coe, Kazuo Ishiguro, John
Lanchester and Emmanuel Carrère. The summer when my mother’s eyes were green
is the debut novel of Tatiana Țîbuleac, a former journalist in Chisinau and a
current Paris resident. The Spanish version of the novel also scooped the Cálamo
Award in 2019, a prize offered by the Cálamo bookshop in Zaragoza. Tatiana
Tibuleac’s debut novel, its Romanian version, was launched in 2016. The novel
focuses on the emotional relationship a mother has with her son. In 2019,
Tatiana Tibuleac’s novel, The Glass garden, brought out by the Cartier
Publishers in Chisinau in 2018, won the European Union’s Award for Literature.

We sat down and spoke to the translator of « The
summer when my mother’s eyes were green », Marian Ochoa de Eribe. Here she
is, giving us details on the history behind the translation, on how the novel
was received in the Hispanic space.

Marian Ochoa de Eribe:

« The story of the
translation is absolutely wonderful. At the 2018 edition of the Madrid
Bookfair, Romania was the guest country and I chaired the awarding ceremony,
with Mircea Cartarescu attending. The ceremony was very beautiful. While the
fair was still on, I ran into a newspaper that published an extensive article
about present-day Romanian literature and I saw a couple of photos there. Save
for two writers, I was familiar with all the authors that were presented in
that publication. Tatiana Tibuleac was one of the authors that were presented
in the article, I remember myself taking a picture of the article and sending
it to a friend of mine at the University in Constanta, Dr Eta Hrubaru. I asked her if she knew anything at all about
Tatiana Tibuleac, she replied she was in possession of Tatiana Tibuleac’s
novel, «The Summer when My Mother’s Eyes were Green». So in early July, when I
arrived in Constanta, the first thing I did was to read the novel, and the
reading was extremely rewarding. I spoke about that on a number of occasions
during the meetings I had with the press and with readers in Spain, telling
them I finished reading the novel on the beach in Mamaia, and that as soon as I
got home I started my PC, searching for a contact of Tatiana Tibuleac. I wrote
a message and I let her know I was still under the spell of the book and I
would like to translate it, I called Enrique Redel, the founder of the Impedimenta
publishers. I told him I discovered a woman writer and I was going to translate
The Summer when my mother’s eyes were green whether he was going to publish it
or not. Enrique trusted me, and the outcome of
that is this wonderful blazing trail of the book and this wonderful
trail Tatiana Tibuleac had in the Hispanic world.

Marian Ochoa de Eribe discovered Romanian literature
in the 1990s when she was teaching comparative literature with Ovidius
University in Constanta. The first Romanian books she translated into Spanish
were Panait Istrati’s Kyra Kyralina and Moș Anghel,/Old man Anghel, as well as
Mircea Eliade’s The Short-sighted Adolescent’s Novel. Since 2009, Marian Ochoa de Eribe has been translating the
works of Mircea Cărtărescu, at the suggestion of Enrique Redel. The Impedimenta
Publishers between 2010 and 2013 brought out Marian Ochoa de Eribe’s versions
of Mircea Cartarescu’s The Roulette Player, Travesty, Nostalgia and Beautiful
Strangers. The Spanish version of Cartarescu’s novel, Solenoid, was published in 2017
and with that, Mircea Cartarescu compelled recognition in the Spanish cultural
space, winning the prestigious Premio Formentor de las Letras in 2018.
The Romanian was the recipient of one of the world’s most prestigious lifetime
achievement literary awards, meant to give an impetus to the thoroughgoing
transformation of human consciousness. »

Marian Ochoa de Eribe is briefing us up on the works of Mircea Cărtărescu and Tatiana Țîbuleac, whose
versions in Spanish she has recently completed.

Marian Ochoa de Eribe:

«Actually, I have never
ceased to translate from Mircea Cartarescu, well…on and off, as of late I have
been working on the Poetry Anthology which is due in autumn this year. To be
honest with you, after I translated The Body, which is the second part of the Blinding
trilogy, a very difficult book, what I needed was a little window, a little
break, so that I could feel for some different stuff in the other drawers of my
mind. But I won’t fail to say that Tatiana Tibuleac’s novel, The Glass Garden,
was a difficult book, an extremely complex one, language-wise. Now, coming back
to your question, it seems I cannot possibly take Mircea Cartarescu off my mind, it’s
as if I had perpetually lived in his world and in his obsessions.»

The Impedimenta publishers has recently announced Marian
Ochoa de Eribe’s Spanish version of Tatiana Tibuleac’s second novel, The Glass
Garden, is available in bookshops. Marian Ochoa de Eribe’s Spanish version of
another Romanian novel is due out from Acantilado publishers in 2021, Gabriela
Adamesteanu’s novel, Temporariness.