17 de fevereiro de 2014

Lavie Tidhar: An Israeli academic asked me recently if I though “Osama” is an Israeli novel. I didn’t know what to say (entrevista)

No que à ficção científica internacional - leia-se: não anglófona - diz respeito, o nome de Lavie Tidhar tem surgido em destaque ao longo dos últimos, fruto não só do seu trabalho enquanto ficcionista mas também - sobretudo, diria - pela sua extraordinária actividade, em várias frentes, de divulgação de ficção de género não oriunda de países de língua oficial inglesa; organizou as edições de 2009 e 2012 da antologia The Apex Book of World SF, e foi o principal editor do World SF Blog, trabalho que viria a ser reconhecido com um prémio BSFA para não-ficção. Osama, o seu romance de 2011, venceu o World Fantasy Award em 2012. Em entrevista a Tanya Tynjala para o blogue da Amazing Stories, Tidhar - israelita de nascimento, a viver actualmente no Reino Unido - fala sobre a dificuldade de a ficção científica internacional se impor no seio de um género com raízes anglófonas bastante profundas e sobre as mudanças que o género conhece actualmente. Dois excertos:
Tanya Tynjala / Amazing Stories: So your work is appreciated because it is “exotic”, but you are expected to write as similar as possible to the kind of literature they are use[d] to. 
Lavie Tidhar: I think in a way that is true, you must just be “different enough”. So it can be a problem. But it is also a problem for the writers. I am writing in English about Israeli so, how much do I need to explain? How much would someone out of that culture understand the context? It’s a delicate balance to maintain. 
What annoys me about this, for example, I read a review of the English translation of [Spanish anthology] Terra Nova, and instead of discussing the stories, the reviewer was talking about how exotic is to read translations, and their lack of experience with translations, and everything about the reviewer and this exotic experience. And I thought, what about the stories? A writer is a writer wherever they are from. Making them exotic is making them again into this sort of performing monkey. Reviewers like that think they have to talk about translations in a way that it is all about the translation instead of talking about it as just literature. 
TT/AS: People want to know how different Israeli science fiction is from English science fiction, don’t they? 
LT: An Israeli academic asked me recently if I though “Osama” is an Israeli novel. I didn’t know what to say. If an Israeli writes a novel, does that make the product an Israeli novel? Does it need to be about Israel to be an Israeli novel? I honestly don’t know the answer to that. The most important thing is that it is still a novel. Another thing is the expectations of the reader. Why would you expect a Peruvian writer to write only about Peruvian reality? North American writers don’t write just about their own country. That can be frustrating. Or to be invited to conventions only to be part of the “non Anglophone writers” panels. Why can’t [w]e talk about other things? We are not some kind of ghetto in literature.
A entrevista completa pode ser lida no blogue da Amazing Stories.

Foto: SFX Magazine (via The Guardian)

Sem comentários: