Available in French: L’Homme de Mittelwerk

The Man from Mittelwerk has been translated into French and is being published by Editions Zorvak, which is an entity my brother created. We undertook a professional translation hiring Sarah Chanteau via Reedsy.com. Sarah specializes in historic fiction and did an excellent job with our story capturing the language and feel of the post-war noir era.

There are many subtleties in translating fiction including how to deal with dialog, expressions, slang and even verse. All of these combine to provide the right experience in a different language. There is a scene in chapter 7 where Jack Waters hears Moonlight Sonata on the radio and he recalls a song he wrote called “Moonlight, Baby.” Sarah translated the verse and made it her own:

D’autres fois, Mick et Antoine se joignaient à moi pour le deuxième refrain. Ils donnaient au morceau une touche légère qui faisait la part belle au chant.

Au clair de la lune, chérie
De moi tu fais toujours partie
Rien ne va plus dans cette vie
Quand tu te trouves loin d’ici
Je n’ai jamais en paix l’esprit
Sans ton clair de lune, chérie

Je l’avais écrite en pensant à Faith. Elle devait bien s’en douter. Tout ce qui avait un tant soit peu de sens ou de beauté en ce bas-monde, c’était grâce à Faith. Elle m’avait sauvé du coma et c’était la seule manière que j’avais trouvée de la remercier.

I’m not a fluent French reader, but I found the quality to be excellent and it makes for an interesting experience to read one’s work translated into another language.

The book is available in French from Amazon.fr, Amazon.ca, Amazon.com in eBook, paperback and hardcover editions. Check out the French book page for more info. (The book is also available in German!)

The Kindle eBook is available at a special introductory price under €5 EUR.

Full credit to Michael for undertaking all the labor of managing the process as well as reviewing, formatting and proofing the book.