Fair: The Life-Art of Translation
Jen Calleja
We send all orders via Royal Mail: within the UK, choose from 1st Class, 2nd Class or Special Delivery; for the rest of the world, International Standard or International Tracked. Delivery and packaging charges are calculated automatically at the checkout.
To collect orders in person from the Bookshop, choose Click and Collect at the checkout.
From the publisher
Fair: The Life-Art of Translation is a satirical, refreshing and brilliantly playful book about learning the art
of translation, being a bookworker in the publishing industry, growing up, family, and class.
Loosely set in an imagined book fair/art fair/fun fair, in which every stall or ride imitates a real-world
scenario or dilemma which must be observed and negotiated, the book moves between personal memories
and larger questions about the role of the literary translator in publishing, about fairness and hard work,
the ways we define success, and what it means – and whether it is possible – to make a living as an artist.
Fair is also interested in questions of upbringing, background, support, how different people function
in the workplace, and the ways in which people are excluded or made invisible in different cultural and
creative industries. It connects literary translation to its siblings in other creative arts to show how
creative and subjective a practice it is while upholding the ethics and politics at play when we translate
someone else’s work.
Blurring the lines between memoir, autofiction, satire and polemic, Fair is a singularly inventive and
illuminating book by one of the UK’s most original and admired writers and translators.