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What is the Second Circle?
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Time and again our eyes were brought together
by the book we read; our faces flushed and paled
Dante, Inferno
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T H E S E C O N D C I R C L E
p r o f i l e
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THE HARVILL PRESS
profiled by Fin Keegan
IT IS HARD to remember now but there was once a time when the great publishing houses of London and New York looked to other cultures for material. Alongside such co-operative ventures as the Marshall Plan and the United Nations there existed a lively interest among readers and publishers alike in the ideas of those whose mother tongue happened to be other than English.
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THE HARVILL PRESS
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Exiles in both capitals set up presses to meet the demand: thus the foundation, to name but a few, of Alfred E. Knopf, Victor Gollancz, André Deutsch, and the currently resurgent Harvill Press, founded in spring 1946 by Manya Harari and Marjorie Villiers.
Harvill's editorial purpose was clear: to bring foreign, particularly Slavic, literatures to the bedside tables and macintosh pockets of the British reading public. In the late 1950's this internationalism was to pay off handsomely when the publisher enjoyed the triple success of Doctor Zhivago, The Leopard, and Joy Adamson's memoir of African life, Born Free.
Then, in 1984, came the man behind Harvill's current success: Christopher MacLehose. A tall Scotsman, said to be of arresting demeanour and wilful locution, MacLehose is blessed with a divine taste in books and a decidedly uncorporate attitude towards publishing. Bloomsbury editor Liz Calder described him to the Observer as "wonderful, eccentric, bloody-mindedly devoted to his authors, and the most stubborn bastard on God's earth". Since his arrival in the firm a sterling list has been asembled, at last count drawn from twenty-two languages and featuring the likes of W.G. Sebald, Cees Nooteboom, Jean Rouaud, José Saramago, Georges Perec, and Raymond Carver.
(Twenty-two languages maybe, but broadly speaking only the one gender: the HP catalogue has an oddly masculine cast, strange in an age when women have been outdistancing men in many literatures, and it is the one area of Harvill's performance where it could do better).
In 1995 HarperCollins/Murdoch, parent company for some years, threatened to implement a break-up plan. By this time the fortunes of European literature among Anglophone publishers were particularly low: at the biggest book fair in the world one major Spanish publisher told a London paper that no British or American representatives even came to his stand. In fact the big houses had been giving their reps instructions not to bother bringing back translations. Dark days indeed.
In the teeth of such apathy--and among publisher-accountants, not readers, mind--Christopher MacLehose, in April 1995, led a £1.5m management buy-out of the Harvill list from Rupert Murdoch. MacLehose's stature in the industry found him not only investors but the services of bright young marketers from the likes of Picador and Waterstones. Other staff were found closer to home: his wife Koukla, a German reader, is a scout for Harvill (MacLehose himself reads French). And the company's devotion has earned it much goodwill among writers: Bitov, Rouaud, Magris et al themselves seek out new writers in their own countries.
Even a cursory glance at the authors on this site will tell you how much we love this publisher. This has not been by design. Spend a little time, as we have, tracking down the best writers in translation today and you will very often find they are in Harvills--even their rejects are of a high order: Bernhard Schlink's The Reader was one that failed the cut.
Corporate wisdom deems translated works a futile market but Harvill, a publishing minnow really, has now had three or four global bestsellers to its name, the latest being Peter Hoeg's chiller thriller. And if readers such as yourselves (and ourselves) have anything to do with it we are sure Sebald, Nooteboom, Rouaud and company will soon become equally read and cherished by the English-speaking world as their famous predecessors. 
Fin Keegan
Contributions to The Second Circle by Fin Keegan
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare
Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin
The "Loire-Atlantique" Cycle by Jean Rouaud
The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
Pereira Declares by Antonio Tabucchi
Justine by Alice Thompson
Brief Reviews including Donald Antrim and John Lanchester
A Profile of the Harvill Press
A Profile of the Editions de Minuit
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