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Writing Fiction in a Foreign Language | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5985 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 9 of 35 19 November 2008 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
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There are quite a few immigrants to France who go on to become a successful writer. Can't be bothered looking them up though.
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| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6100 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 10 of 35 19 November 2008 at 3:13am | IP Logged | ||
I don't know if "immigrant to France who went on to become a succesful writer", but for sure Samuel Beckett wrote in French some of his most famous works. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FrancescoP Octoglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5941 days ago 169 posts - 258 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Norwegian Studies: Georgian, Japanese, Croatian, Greek | Message 11 of 35 19 November 2008 at 7:23am | IP Logged | ||
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To Nabokov, Conrad and Beckett we may add Strindberg: some of his best known works, such as "Inferno", were written straight to French, and a very good French I have to say. The opposite example would be Witold Gombrowicz, who lived in Argentina for decades but never published a line in Spanish.
As for the original question, yes, I think it's definitely possible to publish fiction in a foreign language. That's one of my goals, or better yet: one of my needs. The more I think about Italy, the more I swear to myself that I'm never going to publish another book in Italian, it's a waste of time and talent. Of course a foreigner will always need revision by a native assistent or two, but guys: the same goes for most natives, you have no idea what a mess editors get in lieu of books from amateur writers... In contemporary publishing no writer gets by without the counseling of an editor, so relax: your stuff will go through different stages of revision anyway. Informal revision by friends, however, is paramount: if I was a publisher I would consider a text with awkward constructions, perhaps, but not a text with grammar mistakes. Good luck to all those who wish to try, myself among them! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6377 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 12 of 35 19 November 2008 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Andreï Makine
Alex Kerr Milan Kundera and many others... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6131 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 13 of 35 19 November 2008 at 9:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Add to the list Pira Sudham, a Thai who writes in English
despite coming from a poor background (so he didn't learn English until his late teens). Also it shows that even a speaker of a completely unrelated language can produce good literature in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Most Newbie Germany Joined 5842 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Studies: Slovenian | Message 14 of 35 19 November 2008 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||
There is currently Wladimir Kaminer, who is quite popular in Germany. He originally comes from Russia and he writes in German. He started learning the language as an adult when his family moved to Germany. I remember an interview in which he told that he acquired his knowledge mainly "on the street" and not in the classes he visited for a very short time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wladimir_Kaminer Edited by Most on 19 November 2008 at 5:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Olympia Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5972 days ago 195 posts - 244 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Old English, French | Message 15 of 35 19 November 2008 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not to change the conversation here, but I totally see what the original poster was saying about reading fiction in
English and therefore feeling more comfortable writing fiction in English. I just had to do an assignment for my Spanish class in which I had to write my own short story. I thought it would be difficult, but as I started I realized it wasn't so hard because I've read so many short stories in Spanish over the past few years that it seemed somewhat natural to write in it, at least in this instance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Haksaeng Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6189 days ago 166 posts - 250 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 16 of 35 19 November 2008 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ursula Hegi, Ha Jin, and Alexander Hemon all write in English. Hemon spoke hardly any English when he first arrived in the U.S., and some compare him to Nabokov (I bet he gets sick of that, though). You might want to look up Hemon online, since he has given some interesting interviews about his experience learning English and writing in English before he was really fluent. He used to study lists of vocab words, and any native English speaker who reads his stories had better have a dictionary handy.
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