Novelist from Italy takes ‘Silk’ route to Tamil Nadu

CHENNAI: “It’s surprising to be read in so many different languages,” admits Italian author Alessandro Barrico, asking pardon for his rusty English. We apologise for our threadbare Italian. And we proceed to talk about Tamil, the latest in the list of languages into which Baricco’s work has been translated.
His canon has so far been read in more than 30 languages.The translated title in question that has brought Baricco to Chennai is ‘Silk’, a book he wrote in 1996. ‘Silk’ was published in Tamil earlier this year by Kalachuvadu, a Tamil publishing house that also brings out an eponymous news and literary magazine.
It was poet and translator Sukumaran who introduced the book to Kalachuvadu and translated it from English into Tamil. Malayalam is the only other Indian language into which the title has been translated. “It’s hard to believe that civilisations so different from my own can understand the writing and mood of my books,” says the author.
He compares it to his own appreciation for Japanese literature, particularly the works of Haruki Murakami and Yasunari Kawabata.
‘Silk’ is story of love and enterprise, set in mid-19th century France. It tells the story of a silkworm trader who travels from France to isolationist Japan to source silkworms uncontaminated by a disease plaguing Europe.
For all its structural uniqueness, ‘Silk’ — whose narrative is fragmented into episodic morsels and almost reads like picturesque Morse code — travelled farther than its literary arc would have allowed when it was adapted for cinema in 2007 by Francois Girard, with Keira Knightley and Michael Pitt in lead roles. “At first you consider it a privilege to be adapted for screen, but ultimately you have to let go of the story. It becomes the director’s story, and anything can happen,” he says.
As it can when a translator tackles a story. “The translator has the most difficult part,” says Baricco. “But I let them work with all the freedom once my publisher has given them the green light.”
The 55-year-old author of 10 novels is also a playwright, music critic, essayist and screenplay writer. He is one of the founders of a creative writing school in Turin called Scuola Holden, after J D Salinger’s immortal rebel, Holden Caulfield. “Holden was a rebel who got chucked out of school,” Baricco says. “We wanted our school to be the place creative people — rebels, who wouldn’t fit into the mainstream — could come home to.”
He says Italy is preoccupied with two kinds of writing: noir and social/political critique. Yet, the world reads little of the contemporary literature coming out of Italy because of high costs of translation and publishing, Barrico says. “But the internet will change that.”