This month Moth Books publishes Iris Wolff’s recent novel Blurred in an English translation by Ruth Martin. Clearing, which was shortlisted for the 2024 German Book Prize, will follow in 2026.

Iris Wolff, Ruth Martin and founder of Moth Books, Monique Charlesworth, spoke to New Books in German.

Sarah Escritt: Iris, Blurred and Clearing are ambitious in their geographical and historical scope but are rooted in the multi-cultural areas of Banat and Transylvania where you spent your childhood. You show the political shifts to which people living in these areas have adjusted over the decades. What would you like English-language readers to take from your books?

This is precisely where the power of literature lies: that something foreign, initially unknown, can come close to us. I experience and cherish this myself as a reader.

Iris Wolff

Iris Wolff: I hope that British readers will be able to immerse themselves in this perhaps rather unfamiliar world; that they will become time travellers and, for the duration of the book, live among the characters, feel something of their struggles and hopes – that this world will come alive for them. This is precisely where the power of literature lies: that something foreign, initially unknown, can come close to us. I experience and cherish this myself as a reader.

Has the translation of your books into English brought to light new aspects in the work?

The translation was created with great care and deep affection. That fills me with gratitude.

Iris Wolff

The translation of my books into English is something I have dreamed of for a long time. Miraculously, my books have found exactly the right place, the right publisher. In my conversations with my publisher Monique and my translator Ruth, I had the feeling that both the broad European perspective of this novel and its subtle nuances were truly perceived: the love for the characters’ quirks, the play of light, the descriptions of nature, the use of multiple perspectives. The translation was created with great care and deep affection. That fills me with gratitude.

Ruth, Blurred and Clearing are linguistic collages: shifting narrative perspectives, different languages from a very wide range of sources. They are also mellifluous and a joy to read; the reader is carried along, just as Samuel is as a child when listening to his bedtime story in an early chapter of Blurred. What have been the challenges of translating these texts into English?

Ruth Martin: There are a few obvious technical challenges in both books. For example, Blurred in particular uses a scattering of Transylvanian Saxon words, and dialect is always difficult to translate. Many of those words sound archaic to speakers of standard German, so I mostly chose terms originating in Old English to replace them (e.g. ado, byre). Plus a few loan-words from French, because Transylvanian Saxon is quite closely related to Luxembourgish.

Clearing features a rhyming poem, which is then described by the character who’s recited it as ‘untranslatable’ – and which of course I had to translate! But these are quite well-worn problems. The real challenge in both cases, as you rightly suggest, is the beauty of the prose: it has the appearance of simplicity, but as soon as I typed out the first few sentences of Blurred in English I realised the prose was anything but simple, and I had immediately broken it… Iris writes with such care; every sentence is finely calibrated and every word chosen with real precision, and much of the translation work was about recreating the flow and the music of those sentences. I really hope the English reader is carried along serenely like Samuel is, but there has been a lot of furious paddling under the surface of the text to achieve that.  

The two books are structured very differently.Do you feel that the language, too, is different? Have they demanded a different approach from you as translator?

When you translate a second or third book by some authors, you can put their voice back on like a comfy pair of jeans, but with Iris you can’t get comfortable; each of her novels is somehow completely new.

Ruth Martin

The voice is certainly different in the two books. I translated Blurred and then Clearing without a break in between, and although the writing in both is recognisably Iris’s and they share a number of themes, going from one to the other wasn’t seamless. When you translate a second or third book by some authors, you can put their voice back on like a comfy pair of jeans, but with Iris you can’t get comfortable; each of her novels is somehow completely new. Clearing felt more visual to me, and not just because Kato, one of its two main characters, is an artist. I spent a lot of time looking at images, wanting to really understand the colours and textures of the settings.

I wondered, how did you translate Fritz-Egner-Gesicht in Clearing?

‘He called this gameshow-host vigilance his Fritz Egner face…’ It’s a very light stealth-gloss, just enough to give you some idea of who Fritz Egner is. He’s such a specific cultural figure that I didn’t want to cut him out or replace him with someone more recognisable.  (And I did check that he had an English-language Wikipedia page before making that decision. Readers can look him up if they like.)

Monique, there is implicit advocacy in Iris’ books for multiplicity of voices, perspectives and stories. So it is really interesting that, after a successful writing career, you have decided to make a contribution to the publishing eco-system by setting up your own press. What will be new and different about this press?

It was a joy to discover Iris’s work: so deep and nuanced, so complete and wise in its wit and comédie humaine.

Monique Charlesworth

Monique Charlesworth: My background (I’m half German and studied languages) has given me a particular interest in how people migrate across and through Europe, surviving and reinventing themselves. That is the history of post-war Europe, and also the story of now. I set up Moth Books to publish outstanding writing from these perspectives and quickly realised that I wanted to concentrate on women’s voices. It was a joy to discover Iris’s work: so deep and nuanced, so complete and wise in its wit and comédie humaine.

A translated synopsis and text can’t really convey the nuances and qualities of the original; it’s like peering through a cloudy lens. I’m fortunate in being able to read the originals in a few languages. For Blurred I set up a competition and compared the work of several highly skilled translators with the original. Ruth possessed an extra quality – an intelligent empathy for this very nuanced and allusive text.

Finally, I think it also helps in editing that I understand sub-text and structure from a novelist’s point of view.

Your own book, Mother Country, has been brought out in paperback by Moth Books. The style and subject matter are very different but the themes of loss, abandonment and competing story-lines and perspectives resonate remarkably strongly with those in Blurred and Clearing. How did Iris Wolff’s work come to your attention?

There are many resonances, which is probably why Iris’s writing chimed with me instantly. I thank luck and happenstance. I spotted Frauke Kniffler of Klett-Cotta at the London Book Fair; she had five minutes between appointments and kindly let me explain what I was looking for. And she said she’d have a think. When a little while later she sent me Iris’s novel of 2020, it was a coup de foudre. Then I had a wonderful conversation with Iris’s Lektorin Corinna, who has tremendous passion for her work – we rapidly agreed about everything.

Iris expresses particular thanks to her Lektorin, Corinna Kroker, for her contribution to Blurred and Clearing. The role of Lektorin seems to be more of a feature of the German than the English-language publishing model. Can you see scope for the role of Lektor/Lektorin within a British publishing context?

Germany deeply respects its writers; how marvellous that a book can be carried from inception to publication with a champion to encourage and advise. I too shall accompany a small number of authors from start to finish, but I can’t imagine how I’d manage that with a big list.

How and why did you choose the name, Moth Books, for your press?

Moths are very small but feed on cashmere and silk, the finest foods. And eventually they get everywhere.

Iris: Samuel, the central character in Blurred, is typical of the area in his multilingualism but his friend observes that no-one listens as he does: he is an astute observer and careful listener. Do you hope for readers like Samuel?

I must admit that I write about characters I would truly enjoy spending time with. I live with them for years, trying to understand them more deeply. It’s as if they bring a quality into my life that I long for. Listening is part of that. We live in a world filled with constant voices, opinions, and demands. I wish we would sometimes choose to listen rather than speak – for in my experience, everything speaks, everything carries a story.

Each episode in Blurred is told from the perspective of a different character. Clearing is narrated backwards. The structure of both books, and their multiple references to other stories, draw attention to story-telling itself. At the end of Blurred, Samuel’s daughter, Liv, who wants to become a magician, observes that the real skill lies not in the card tricks but in the story-telling by which she distracts her audience. Do you have an aim in your story-telling?

There is this wonderful opening in Romanian fairy tales: It was – and yet it never happened. That delicate balance between fiction and reality is something I try to let shine through in my storytelling. The story must feel so real that we, as readers, forget it is invented. And at the same time, the illusion must be deliberately broken. It should be clear: this is a fictional world – just one version of experiencing the vast, many-voiced world we live in. Too much clarity, certainty, or conviction is the death of art. For me, art is that shimmering in-between space where meaning remains open, and ambiguity is allowed to breathe.

Liv reflects on the fact that she needs a degree of distance before she can see someone clearly; if she is too close, the picture is blurred. Do you need this distance in order to write? Would you need, say, a residency in the UK in order to write about the Germany in which you live?

What a wonderful idea! I imagine a small writing hut in the garden, like Virginia Woolf’s in Rodmell. Yes, I truly believe that too much closeness can keep us from developing a broader perspective. I find little appeal in writing about my everyday life in Germany – perhaps because I feel I know it too well. What draws me instead is the desire to venture into the unknown through writing, to discover the blank spaces on both inner and outer maps, those places that were once marked on old sea charts with the words: Here be dragons, a warning of dangerous or unexplored territories.

The language of your books conjures up vivid images. When Samuel and his friend, Oz, fly clandestinely over the border in a noisy propeller aeroplane, the cats, dogs and even the sunflowers look up. Given that your father was a Lutheran Pastor, I wondered if the language and imagery of the Lutheran Bible was an important part of your childhood?

Stories have been important worlds of experience for me from an early age: Daniel in the lion’s den, Elijah being fed by a raven, Joseph in the well – my father told me these biblical stories and also painted them. Beyond that, fairy tales were read aloud, Gulliver’s Travels, German heroic legends, and Odysseus’s wanderings. Today, I believe that through these stories certain things became clear to me early on: the power of language, the symbolic nature of the world, and that my life is incomplete without a connection to something greater. To this day, stories – whether biblical tales, narrative literature, or poetry – help me grow.

The way in which, in each episode of the books, it is as if the reader steps into a different space or painting, makes me wonder whether your earlier background in art and exhibitions informs your approach to your writing?

Literature always only truly comes into being through the reader.

Iris Wolff

Thank you for this beautiful comparison. In my books, I mostly look back, yet there is a second force that continually draws me to literature: the love of beginnings! I imagined that readers would be given seven new beginnings in Blurred, constantly having to find their way in a new world – and from this, a more comprehensive picture of reality emerges. Painting has also shaped my writing, and I try to transfer elements from painting into my prose. For example, the openness of composition becomes increasingly important to me. The narrated world imaginatively extends beyond the picture frame; this places readers in a much more active role. The reader becomes a tracker, able to seek out connections. Literature always only truly comes into being through the reader.

Time is an important theme in Blurred. Your teacher-turned-bookseller character, Bene, says that a book needs to be read at the right moment. You worked for many years at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach. Did this turn out to be an essential part of your preparation to become a writer?

I worked for almost ten years at the German Literature Archive in Marbach. During that time, I began my first novel. I believe it strengthened me on my path; I saw that writing always involves struggle, that one rarely meets one’s own standards. At the same time, it makes you aware of how many books are forgotten, which humbles me deeply and still resonates today. I never forget how fortunate I am that my books carry me, that they have readers. That is by no means a given. There is no entitlement to success, or to longevity.

By the end of Blurred and towards the beginning (which is towards the end!) of Clearing, life is changing and emigration is emptying villages in Romania of their German-speaking inhabitants. How are your books received in Romania today?

They are deeply appreciated among the last remaining Germans. It touches me greatly when I see and hear people tell me how much they feel at home in my books. Unfortunately, they are not recognized to the same extent by the Romanian population – although the books tell a shared history.

Monique says that Moth Books crosses borders. Clearing has crossed media boundaries: there is a Clearing playlist on Spotify. Should we all listen?

Definitely! I created this playlist and listened to it throughout the writing process of the novel, especially when I went for walks, pondered the story, or felt stuck. It put me in the mood of the story. The playlist includes songs in English, German, Romanian, and even one in the dialect of the Transylvanian Saxons.

Finally, a question for all of you. In Blurred, Benes finds temporary refuge working in a bookshop. Classics and literature from the GDR and elsewhere in Eastern Europe are displayed on the tables. Do you have a bookshop that you would like to recommend? In an ideal bookshop, what books would you like to see on the tables? Iris, would you find space for Herta Müller?

Ruth: The Little Green Bookshop in Herne Bay, where I live, is wonderful. Interesting author events, greetings cards by local artists, and a small dog who is always pleased to see you (every bookshop should have one). Sometimes I just go in for a chat – I don’t think they mind. Whatever is on the tables, there’s no substitute for a good bookseller who can make personal recommendations.

Iris: I have a favourite bookstore in Freiburg – a place where you enter to buy one specific book and leave with two more. The bookseller knows me and understands what to recommend. The best book discoveries come from other people’s recommendations. If I rely only on reviews, I’m often disappointed. A good bookseller knows the reading history of their customers and knows what might be right for them. Sometimes there’s even a little sweet treat, or if the world feels a bit off, a shot of liquor. And yes: definitely a place for Herta Müller. And whilst I’m making wishes: the novelist Gerhard Meier and the poet Mary Oliver! My greatest current heroes.

Monique: Only one?

As an inveterate browser, I love Foyle’s in Charing Cross Road for its magnificent design and huge choice, supplying books in over 100 languages and even using them to create walls between departments. I also enjoy Daunt’s in Marylebone which has lovely staff and great charm. My ideal bookshop must of course showcase Iris’s work, perhaps with a ‘reprinting now’ sign.

Read our recommendations of Blurred and Clearing

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