Sezam Book Publishing House: Scenes from Our Hidden Lives
Sezam Book Publishing House: Scenes from Our Hidden Lives
Grant Awarded: 35,000€
The editorial concept of this project emphasizes intimate, family relationships and stories and it explores how these “hidden lives” shape European societies and politics. The private space of emotions and imagination is put under the public eye of the readership, while the public space, as a backdrop and counterpoint is more contoured and fantasized, providing a metaphoric, critical mirror of today’s Europe’s structure and power relations.
Aspiring to great social changes is visibly absent, while authors focus on self-exploration and immersion into the intimate and imaginative. On the one hand, one can interpret this as a reluctance to tackle complex social, economical and cultural problems of contemporary European societies, and almost as a self-preservation act in the face of great changes Europe is experiencing today. On the other hand, we observe these struggles, shared among the characters of different cultural backgrounds, as an inside-out perspective on the historical, social and political contexts in which they exist.
The added values of this project are dealing with the topic of physical disability through the book Apnea, and the collaboration with the Faculty of Philology to include E. Szvoren’s book of short stories into the study curriculum.
The project includes six books, one book of short stories and five novels, translated into Serbian from Norwegian, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Italian and the French language, out of which five books received the EUPL. Succeeding in the past two literary translation projects co-financed by Culture and Creative Europe programmes, Sezam Book systematically continues to promote and introduce the readers to the contemporary literature of these countries, to promote translators and support the circulation of literature written in less used European languages.
