Translator Jamie Bulloch speaks to Sarah Hemens about the Black Forest Investigations series by Oliver Bottini and the joy of translating a good crime novel.
The Black Forest crime novel series by Oliver Bottini comprises six books which are “very much a series,” their translator Jamie Bulloch tells me. The last of the six, The White Circle, appeared in bookshops in June this year, and like the five that preceded it, it centres on investigations led by Louise Bonì, Chief Inspector of the Freiburg criminal police. The Times heralded this final book as “a fitting and frightening conclusion to a magnificent series.” Jamie explains the mixture of satisfaction and sadness as he ‘closes the case file’ having translated the last book.
“In addition to the action and plot of each book, there’s the slower-burning backstory of the main characters. It has been such a joy to translate,” Jamie tells me, “all the more so once I was about three books in and I’d hit precisely on a style for them. I’d also created a database of words and terms I’d used for the more technical aspects of police work and its terminologies to ensure I was consistent throughout the books. There’s a huge amount of satisfaction in having completed the six.”
But there’s a sadness too at having to leave them behind, driven in part by Jamie’s love of Oliver Bottini’s writing. “Oliver is first and foremost a very talented writer. And a crime writer after that. We often talk of crime writers and their books being pigeonholed, and Bottini is truly a writer who smashes any stereotypes here. At times, the crime fades into the background as the characters and their story come to the fore.”
UK publication of the titles spans 2018 to 2024, and Jamie has lived with main character Chief Inspector Louise Bonì at intervals during that time as he’s worked on the books. Is he sad to leave Louise behind? What kind of character is she?
“There are, of course, other fictionalised detectives who are women, and others who battle alcoholism, as Louise does. One of the things that sets this series apart, though, is the Black Forest setting, close to the French border. In turn, this reflects Louise’s own Franco-German heritage. As the series progresses, her German mother and French father, who are separated, each move to the other’s country. The Black Forest setting is one that I have passed through on several occasions, and Bottini has definitely evoked it brilliantly. It all rings so true.
Louise is a maverick, relying on her intuition. This thinking outside the box is what gets her ahead in investigative work. It can also mean that she rubs up against more conventionally minded senior colleagues. She’s frustrated by what she sees as secrecy in the upper echelons of the force—a secrecy that, to her mind, borders on corruption. This interplay between the police service and the domestic and international security services provides another interesting aspect to the books. She sees their work as frustrating and thwarting the rule of law.”
Jamie likens Bottini’s thriller writing to that of le Carré, high praise indeed. He admires Bottini’s ability to bring universally and internationally pertinent crimes to a richly drawn provincial setting. I know that Jamie has met the author in person, and I wonder how this has helped in the translation of the work. Jamie explains that after the first draft of each translation, he has been able to send Oliver a list of queries and they’ve worked through these to ensure that the meaning and spirit of the original are rendered effectively and accurately in English. “It also helps that Oliver is a really nice man, as well as being a great writer,” Jamie smiles.
I will read a section in German, see how it plays in my head, and then recreate it in English. It needs to capture the excitement of the original.
Jamie Bulloch
I’m also keen to hear about what particular things translators might need to look out for when translating crime fiction, and how Jamie goes about this. “I don’t approach any book with pre-conceived ideas,” says Jamie. “With a crime novel or thriller, it is imperative to keep any thread of suspense. The action has to be exciting. I will read a section in German, see how it plays in my head, and then recreate it in English. It needs to capture the excitement of the original.”
One of the joys of translation work, Jamie explains, is coping with the variety of texts. In his case, he averages work on one crime fiction novel per year. “It’s an opportunity to really let yourself rip,” he says, and “in a book like Bottini’s, there’s going to be a great literary element that you need to take great care with as well.”
If Jamie were browsing in a bookshop and overheard a bookseller talking to a customer about Bottini, what would he hope to be overhearing? “First and foremost, I hope they’d be stressing how much of a good writer he is, harking back to my earlier point. He’s got a way of writing such remarkable prose and compelling characters. If you take the first book, Zen and the Art of Murder, for example, he can sustain your interest in building up the characters and setting as he describes the hunt for a missing Japanese monk through a snowy Freiburg countryside. No crime has even been committed at this point. He has a great way of letting the characters—including the more peripheral characters—speak and reveal themselves.”
The translator Annie Rutherford wrote a German crime overview for this website a couple of years ago and it has consistently been one of the most clicked on articles on the website. The Crime Writers Associations has a Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation, helping readers to navigate what’s on offer. Other crime writers have also been successful in translation from German, including Hansjörg Schneider, with the Kommissar Hunkeler series set in the tri-border area around Basel (translated by Astrid Freuler and by Mike Mitchell), Simone Buchholz (translated by Rachel Ward), Dirk Kurbjuweit (Imogen Taylor translated his book Fear), Andreas Pflüger (translated by both Astrid Freuler and Shaun Whiteside) and Ferdinand von Schirach (who has been translated by Kat Hall and Carol Janeway).
Crime fiction in translation can help to smash stereotypes…
Jamie Bulloch
“There can sometimes be barriers to readers embracing fiction in translation,” Jamie says. “They want to feel they’ve read ‘the original’ or that translated fiction is a worthy chore rather than an entertaining or thought-provoking pastime. Crime fiction in translation can help to smash stereotypes like these. There’s such a diverse range of writing out there in German, and the crime fiction is a microcosm of this.
I know when I get stuck reading-wise, a good crime novel or thriller will reignite my reading spark.”
Finally, I couldn’t help but ask Jamie about the ones that got away. Are there other writers he feels have been criminally overlooked?
“I’ve enjoyed Melanie Raabe. And Theresa Hanning has written a great dystopian book about the future ramifications of technological progress, The Optimisers, that the New Books in German jury singled out a few years ago and seems very relevant now in the context of AI.”
Black Forest Investigations – all books authored by Oliver Bottini and translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
Jamie Bulloch is the translator of more than fifty books from German, including works by Daniela Krien, Timur Vermes, Robert Menasse, Martin Suter, Arno Geiger, Romy Hausmann and Sebastian Fitzek. His translation of Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize, an award in which he has been runner-up on two further occasions. He has been a member of the New Books in German jury for more than ten years. Jamie has a PhD in interwar Austrian history and is the author of Karl Renner: Austria. He lives in London with his wife and three daughters.
