Interview with Emanuela Anechoum, Head of International Rights at the publishing house e/o

What has your career path been, and what does your job involve today?

I have been working as a foreign rights manager for e/o for almost eight years. Before that, I worked at a literary agency in London, also in foreign rights, and so at book fairs I met my future bosses – Sandro and Eva Ferri and Sandra Ozzola, to whom I sold the Italian rights to English titles. Before that, after studying publishing at the Catholic University of Milan for both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, I had done an internship at another literary agency in Milan. I’d always known I wanted to work in publishing.

In my job, I manage relations with foreign publishers, but that’s not all. As well as sending out submissions and handling negotiations, I deal with contracts and royalties. I oversee the entire foreign edition process, from start to finish.

So you joined e/o when the ‘Ferrante affair’ had already broken?

Yes, I joined in 2018. I wasn’t there during the 2016 boom; I arrived during the ‘long tail’ of Ferrante Fever. However, I was able to handle negotiations abroad in 50 countries for The Lying Life of Adults [published in 2019, Ed.] and it was one of the most formative experiences of my career.

How did you perceive Ferrante’s success from England?

Elena Ferrante’s success opened doors and interest in Italian literature has grown. I could see this quite simply in London bookshops too, where Italian authors were initially lacking. In the years that followed, we began to see many reissues, many new translations, including of classic authors such as Elsa Morante and Natalia Ginzburg. This happened in the Anglo-Saxon market and had a knock-on effect in other markets too.

Furthermore, immediately after the ‘Ferrante phenomenon’, interest in contemporary Italian literature was focused on a more twentieth-century style of storytelling, linked to specific themes of the post-war period. Now, however, in my view, the foreign market has opened up to various explorations of the contemporary. I’ll cite one example among many: Le perfezioni (Bompiani, 2022) by Vincenzo Latronico.

Was the decision to found Europa Editions a key factor in Ferrante’s success?

Europa Editions, which has now been in existence for 20 years, was created precisely to address the lack of translations from Italian—and, more generally, from European languages—in the English-speaking market. Let us remember that Ferrante’s first book, L’amore molesto, was published in Italy in 1992 and in France and other European countries shortly afterwards. The English-speaking market, however, remained unresponsive. So, precisely to fill that void, Europa Editions was founded and published not only authors from e/o but also authors from other Italian publishing houses who had not yet been translated for the English market, such as Domenico Starnone, Andrea Camilleri and many others.

How do you view the reception of Italian authors in the French market?

The French market strikes me as one of the most receptive. There is certainly greater exploration, greater variety, and it seems to me there are far more readers of Italian in French publishing houses.

What, in your opinion, is the most difficult aspect of selling an Italian book abroad today?

In my view, the difficulty isn’t limited to Italian books. There is a generalised crisis, a generalised flattening of international sales linked to a reluctance on the part of publishers to take risks. Often they simply follow the trend, be it Korean literature or Japanese feel-good fiction. There is far less scouting and far less flexibility when it comes to taking risks, probably because the markets are closing up a bit. Furthermore, there is a difficulty linked to advances, to the fact that the big agencies sell titles at exorbitant prices.

Towards Italians, in particular, I see a positive openness. However, we often run into difficulties linked to certain stereotypes, especially in the realm of genre fiction. For example, a foreign publisher would be unlikely to buy an Italian fantasy novel, or a crime novel, unless that crime novel has features recognisable to the foreign reader. As for contemporary literary fiction, however, the problem lies rather, as I said, in the reluctance to take risks. So, there is a tendency to buy a title if it has won an award, if it has sold well in Italy, or if it has already been translated into other languages. Few publishers have the courage to buy a book simply because they liked it.

It is said, in fact, that translated literature is becoming increasingly difficult to publish. How can this difficulty be overcome?

When there is a crisis, or even just the fear of a crisis, the market tightens up in every sector, not just publishing. Consequently, it is assumed that readers need something familiar, something more comforting, and the focus shifts to authors from one’s own country, who also allow for savings on translation costs and are available to promote the book. In short, when the market shrinks, one opts for the easiest choice, the one that seems safest, but in doing so, culturally, politically and also in terms of the dissemination of ideas, we isolate ourselves from one another. If everyone wants to publish authors from their own country and buy fewer foreign authors, even selling one’s own authors abroad becomes impossible.

In reality, as far as Edizioni e/o is concerned, the ideal on which the entire publishing house is based is precisely the opposite: to build a bridge between cultures, even when it is not easy. So much so that Edizioni e/o was founded in 1979 with the idea of translating mainly Eastern European authors because they were absent from the Italian market, voices often censored or neglected due to the Cold War. It wasn’t a project that seemed profitable or easy, just as it wasn’t easy to set up a publishing house translating Italian, French and Spanish works into American English. Taking the easy route has never been our style, yet success came because the books were good. So, in my view, we should return to that idea, even if it’s increasingly difficult, because there are concrete, tangible obstacles.

Can you give us an example of Italian authors published by e/o who have been translated into various languages?

There are several examples; I’ll mention three. The first is Sasha Naspini, an author from the Maremma who has an extremely distinctive, unique style that is unlike anything else on the Italian literary scene. It wasn’t easy at first, but today his books have been translated into around fifteen languages. And in these cases, publishers have generally acquired the rights to his subsequent books as well, and this is very important, because, as far as I’m concerned, one should never think solely of a single title, but of the author’s career.

Another example is Ahmet Altan, who, of course, is not an Italian author, but he is an author whose rights to his historical novels we represent, having been entrusted to us by him during the period he was in prison [2016–2021, Ed.]. A few years ago, he won the Prix Femina with Madame Hayat (Actes Sud, 2021) in France, and I hope that many other foreign publishers will take notice of his novels.

The third example is La parte sbagliata by Davide Coppo [published in 2024, Ed.], which was released in France by Calmann Levy, then in Germany, where it sold very well, in the Netherlands, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Greece and Slovenia. It will also be released in America. In any case, we cannot predict the results in different markets: it is part of the mystery that makes this work so interesting.

Translators act as a bridge and sometimes allow us to circumvent market logic. How do you work with them?

Whenever I’ve been contacted by translators, especially at book fairs, I’ve always been very happy to work with them, because they’re the ones taking the risk. In fact, they’d contact me because they’d read a book they’d enjoyed and wanted to translate it. They’d chosen it because they loved it. Working with them is always a positive experience because we share a common goal and because there is mutual trust and passion on both sides for the book, for that specific title. Relationships with translators, therefore, are useful, based on trust and mutual respect, and develop from a passion for the book – something we now take a bit for granted, but which is the foundation of everything.