Nobel's second writers

You could banish me to a deserted island, deny me a watch or a calendar, put me at a latitude where I could not notice the changing seasons, but I'll bet that I would still know when a particular Thursday of October ticks along. Literature Nobel Thursday, that is, the day the wise folks in Stockholm decide to write up a reading list for us starry-eyed folks.

It is a curious anticipation, this annual round of speculation we instinctively throw ourselves into, as if it's worked into our body clocks, our pulse quickening as it only can in October time, as we howl in outrage that Philip Roth is likely to be denied his rightful summons to Swede.

Or as we marvel that Haruki Murakami, rock star among novelists that he is, continues to be the bookies' favourite. Or as we consider the thrilling possibility of Adonis and Amos Oz sharing the prize, and thereby showing a more sane future for the currently occupied lands of Palestine.

Or as we concede, it's likely to be some dreadfully deserving writer we have never heard of, and go on to pray that let her or him please be available in English translation, because to go another day without ordering the new laureate's book. Oh no, to be resigned to that, as happened when an obscure Chinese writer won more than a decade ago, would be to feel unworthy of calling ourselves serious readers!

It's bad enough that a writer we had not marked out for glory, on whom we can speak authoritatively right on receipt of the press release from Stockholm, has audaciously taken the spotlight. Now to be denied his books would be unbearable.

Patrick Modiano, who I hadn't read till now, or thought about really, fortunately has his books available in translation, and even as you read this, I'll be working out the logistics to get copies of Missing Person and The Search Warrant asap.

But seriously, isn't this what the literature Nobel really is about? To be nudged into opening up to new storytelling, to shift our reading around, and inhabit more inclusively a civilisational space unlimited by our linguistic limitations. To be forced out of the denial and conceit peculiar to those of us who ready primarily in English. To also value more graciously the role of the translator in enabling us to be rightful citizens of the Republic of Books.

So, bless Modiano's translators, who have and will continue to bring his writing to us. And as you read their books, think a while about what Edith Grossman, translator of Nobel laureates like Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Márquez, wrote about the lack of acknowledgement of her and her ilk's efforts: "I believe that serious professional translators, often in private, think of themselves - forgive me, I mean ourselves - as writers, no matter what else may cross our minds when we ponder the work we do, and I also believe we are correct we do so.

Is this sheer presumption, a heady kind of immodesty on our part? What exactly do we literary translators do to justify the notion that the term "writer" actually applies to us?

Aren't we simply the humble, anonymous handmaids-and-men of literature, the grateful, ever-obsequious servants of the publishing industry? In the most resounding yet decorous terms I can muster, the answer is no, for the most fundamental description of what translators do is that we write - or perhaps rewrite - in language B a work of literature originally composed in language A."

Grossman chose to call the translator the second writer. And this is a better day than any other to wonder about the legion of second writers who'll be sharing, in the shadows, this honour with Modiano.