Published in ... Iran

       A whole 'tumblr' could be dedicated just to following the odd and unlikely translations that get published in contemporary Iran, as faithfully reported every few days at IBNA. So, in the past week alone we learn that a collection of Angela Carter stories is coming out, along with two plays by ... Arthur Kopit (yes, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad is coming to Iran ...). Timur Vermes' Hitler-returns novel, Er ist wieder da, is being translated (it's forthcoming in English from MacLehose Press) -- hell, even a recent ... Mitch Albom book is being inflicted upon the Iranian people (yes, apparently the Iranians will shy away from almost nothing ...).
       What now caught my eye was not so much the fact that Chantal Thomas' Farewell, My Queen is hitting Iranian bookshelves (jaw-dropping, yes, but on the other hand, as the previous examples suggest, par for the course) but rather some additional information about the translator's other work:

Saeedeh Bougheiri has translated several books into Persian including Still wie die Nacht by Manfred Bieler, Die griechische Tänzerin(Greek Dancer) by Arthur Schnitzler, The Most Beautiful Book in the World by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt as well as Alabama Song by Leroy.

       That last title is, of course, Gilles Leroy's 2007 prix Goncourt-winning Zelda Fitzgerald novel, Alabama Song.
       Yes, a novel about Zelda Fitzgerald (a couple of those have come out this year in the US, haven't they ?) that won the biggest French literary prize is appearing in Iran before it comes out in the US .....
       What a strange world we live in.
       What a strange way American publishers deal with works in translation.