Behind the scenes: the slow business of show business

The first quarter of the year is over and the Irish Festival Fribourg/Freiburg is taking shape. A lot has been accomplished since I last wrote about the festival in October. Even though there is plenty more to do, and it feels as if new tasks are added to the list daily, we are also seeing the first results of the winter’s work.

I’ve attended my fair share of cultural events over the years but only once before actually worked on the organisational side. That was in 2003, the last job I had before I left Ireland for good, when I worked as a producer for Gúna Nua theatre company. I’d forgotten how enjoyable and satisfying it is to make things happen! But, my God, where did that 20 years go?

The most important breakthrough this year was that the Agglomération de Fribourg, the equivalent of the city council, decided to back the festival. Without their support, other potential funders would automatically have said no.

We got the news on March 9th after sending in our 25-page application at the end of November with 13 supporting documents. More supporting documents were requested in January, including a contract with one of the venues. The project was discussed at three meetings before we finally got the good news. A champagne moment. 

Group effort

Having the support of the Irish Embassy, Tourism Ireland, Fribourg Tourism and the Irish Film Institute International helped make our case much stronger. There are still some funding decisions to come in and possibly more applications to send out. In the meantime, we are getting everything else lined up – the programme, the venues, the website, publicity, ticketing, volunteers, insurance, travel … the list goes on.

Now it’s as sure as sure can be: Ireland is coming to Fribourg for the weekend of 6-8 October. Save the date! We’ll be announcing the programme in June, which is suddenly around the corner. Just a note that I’m not using the royal we. I’m joined in the whole enterprise by two brilliant Fribourg women – Julie Hunt and Deirdre Coghlan. Follow the festival Facebook page to hear more about our progress.

Book anniversary

In other news, it’s a year since Voting Day was published by Fairlight Books, and two years since the Swiss edition came out. I’m visiting two Swiss schools in the next few weeks to talk to students who’ve studied the novel and I’ve been invited to a university in Poznań in Poland later this month for the same reason. I’m delighted the story is still making waves, and I love meeting readers of all ages.

On my own reading pile, I’ve been working my way through the excellent Wyndham-Banerjee series of crime novels, set in Calcutta in the 1920s. I was lucky enough to interview the author Abir Mukherjee at the Société de Lecture in Geneva last week. We were in the beautiful yellow room you see above. I don’t have photos of the event yet.

More reading tips

My standout read of the year so far is Haven by Emma Donoghue, an extraordinary, captivating story set in seventh-century Ireland, featuring three monks on a quest to found a monastery in the most inhospitable place possible – Skellig Michael off the coast of Kerry. It was amazing to be transported back that far in history. Donoghue must be one of the most accomplished writers of historical fiction working today. I can also highly recommend the film adaptation of her 2016 novel, The Wonder.

And there’s a treat in store for fans of Swiss crime fiction with the publication of the second title in the Polizei Bern series by Kim Hays this month. Sons and Brothers centres on the suspicious death of an eminent (but not very likeable) heart surgeon whose body is pulled from the Aare in Bern on a winter’s night. The investigation leads detectives Giuliana Linder and Renzo Donatelli back to the doctor’s childhood home in the Emmenthal region.

Time for me to wrap up and wish the readers of this blog a pleasant Easter break. This is birthday season in our home with three birthdays coming up next week, so my to-do list is taken over by presents, cakes and parties for the next while. A very welcome change.

Green shoots for Voting Day: news and events

Spring is in the air and I’m ready for more colour and connection. I think everybody feels the same. At the moment, I’m gearing up for the UK & Ireland launch of Voting Day with Fairlight Books on April 1st. The book will also be available in the United States which is very exciting (links to order below).

When Voting Day came out in Switzerland, this time last year, book shops were closed and the maximum number of people who were allowed to gather was five. It makes me all the more grateful for the opportunities coming up this year – especially an invitation to the legendary Listowel Writers’ Week!

Here are some dates for your diary if you live in Switzerland or Ireland:

March 8 BERN International Women’s Day event in Stauffacher Book Shop, Neuengasse in Bern. Stauffacher was founded in the 1950s and my book is set in Bern in the 1950s. Serendipity! My characters could have shopped there. I’m pretty sure Beatrice would have been a regular.

Doors open for the FRAUEN IM FOKUS event at 8pm. There’ll be music from pop duo Cruise Ship Misery and I’ll be in conversation with the German translator of Voting Day, Barbara Traber.  Come along, bring your friends, and let’s celebrate books, women’s rights, music and other positive things. Tickets (CHF 15.00) and more info here. The event is in German.

April 6 ZURICH at the Swiss National Museum (Landesmuseum).  As part of the current exhibition Amazingly ambivalent (Wunderbar widersprüchlich), I’ll be giving a short tour and talk on the topic of contradictions in Switzerland. The tour, in German again, starts at 6pm. You can reserve a place at this link.

April 21 DUBLIN for the launch of Voting Day (Fairlight Books) in Hodges Figgis Book Shop, Dawson Street. After two years of cancellations and missed opportunities, I’m not missing the chance to celebrate the new edition of Voting Day. The book will be launched by the lovely Anne Griffin, author of Listening Still. The launch starts at 6pm and everyone is welcome. The more the merrier!

June 1 – 5 LISTOWEL WRITERS’ WEEK in Co. Kerry. One of Ireland’s longest-running book festivals, Listowel Writers’ Week is a famously friendly and stimulating occasion. Lots of great writers have been part of the festival over the years and I’m truly honoured to be asked to present Voting Day in this beautiful part of the world. Date of the event to be confirmed.  

For all my books I’ve worked with small publishers and no agent. It’s been a bit of a rocky road but somehow, good things keep happening – just in the nick of time – that make it all worthwhile. I hope I get to meet some of this blog’s readers in person over the next couple of months.

Here are those links I promised to buy Voting Day in different places:

Barnes and Noble (US), Waterstones (UK) and Stauffacher (Orell Füssli). I also have an order form for the four Swiss editions (English, German, French & Italian) on this website, if you want to order directly from me to a Swiss address. Available from O’Mahony’s in Ireland.

And you might enjoy this review I wrote for the Dublin Review of Books of Rosita Sweetman’s wonderful memoir Feminism Backwards. One last link in this link-fest – I really enjoyed writing this essay for the booksbywomen.org website about time travellers and book research. Have you spoken to any time travellers recently?

Book club questions for Voting Day

Do book clubs have a natural shelf life? I’ve been a member of the same book club for about ten years. We started out as work colleagues and now more than half the group work in different places so the club has become a way to keep in touch. The most far-flung member of the group lives in Joshua Tree.

But, I must admit, we are beginning to lose our book club mojo. The number of no-shows and did-not-finish-on-time readers is growing and the gaps between meetings are getting longer. During Covid we had a few video sessions and they went very well. Maybe that’s the way forward.

At the invitation of a friend, I visited a very lively book club last week, a group of mostly Americans living in and around Bern. What made the evening special – apart from the amazing snacks and hospitality – was that the book they were discussing was Voting Day.

I’ve done quite a few author talks recently but mostly to an audience of potential readers, such as the image above with the Zurich International Women’s Association. This was different. The book club members had read my book and seemingly enjoyed it very much. They were brimming with enthusiasm and questions and I was impressed to see how many aspects of the story resonated with different readers on an individual level. It sparked a discussion about Swiss life, women’s role in families and society today, what has and hasn’t changed.

I left the group with a promise that I would put together a list of questions for book clubs, something they said they always looked for online. So here it is, my list of book club questions for Voting Day. I hope you find them useful and if you have any more suggestions, let me know in the comments.

Book club questions

  1. In Voting Day, what is the most important difference between the characters – generation, class or personality?
  2. How well do you think Vreni knows Margrit and vice versa?
  3. Is Peter a good husband to Vreni?
  4. Who is the strongest character?
  5. We see different types of marriages and views of marriage in the story. To what extent do the four characters’ understanding of marriage overlap or differ?
  6. What are the blind spots of the four protagonists?
  7. Which character appealed to you the most?
  8. How does motherhood impact the lives of Vreni and Esther?
  9. How important is family to each of the main characters?
  10. What do we learn about the place of foreigners or minorities in Swiss society at the time?
  11. If there is a message to the book, what would you say it is?
  12.  Switzerland was an outlier with regard to women’s suffrage, with women remaining disenfranchised until 1971. Do you think the situation of the four main characters is therefore very different to the situation of women in your country in the 1950s?
  13. What is the most significant change in women’s lives between then and now, as depicted in the book? Is there anything that hasn’t changed?
  14. What does the boy Ruedi symbolise or represent in the novel?
  15. What scene in the story did you find the most moving?

Book news

The last month has been busy on the book front. I put in an application for a grant to support the writing of my next novel next year. Will keep you posted on that. Even if nothing comes of it, I was still motivated to start writing again and I welcome that very much!

At the end of August, I met the Swiss Ambassador to Ireland José-Louis Touron to plan an event in Dublin in November. Also part of the meeting was Abigail Seran, a Swiss writer whose latest book D’ici et d’ailleurs is partly set in Ireland.

In the first weekend of September, I had a wonderful opportunity to take part in Le livre sur les quais festival in Morges. I spent the whole of Sunday in the authors tent meeting readers and signing books. And I got to meet some amazing writers, including the Flemish author Stefan Hertmans who is a genius as far as I am concerned. Caroline Bishop (author of The Other Daughter) and I shared a stage for our event, Stories of Women’s Suffrage in Switzerland.  It was all over too soon!

Also this month, Fairlight Books revealed the cover of their edition of Voting Day, to be published next April. I think it’s beautiful (see below). There was even an article about Voting Day in The Bookseller. And finally, the Swiss book blog, Mint & Malve, ran a glowing review of the German translation of Voting Day, Der Tag an dem die Männer Nein sagten.  

A reminder that Voting Day (distributed by Zytglogge Verlag) and the three other language versions are available to buy or order in all Swiss book shops or here on my website (Switzerland only). Happy reading this autumn!

A fairy-tale ending for my first novel

Schloss Heidegg (image from heidegg.ch)

Actually, it’s more of a beginning than an ending – I hope! This Sunday I have my first in-person book event since Voting Day was published. The event is taking place in a fairy-tale setting, Schloss Heidegg in Canton Lucerne.

The castle, overlooking Lake Baldegg, dates back to the Middle Ages. It has a rose garden and a park and a museum. I would go there gladly anyway. But to be invited by the Seetaler Poesiesommer festival to talk about my book is amazing.

I’ll be there along with Barbara Traber, the German translator of Voting Day (Der Tag, an dem die Männer Nein sagten), who also wrote the foreword of the book. Barbara was a translating match made in heaven. Not only is she a Swiss-German author who has written and translated dozens of books, she also remembers the vote in 1959 when she was a teenager. She has given me wonderful encouragement and guidance since we met exactly a year ago.

The event in German begins at 11am and you can find more details on the castle website here. It’s organised by Ulrich Sutter and there is an Irish theme with music from Irish composers and readings from the poetry of Franz Felix Lehni who lived in Ireland.

UK publisher

Last month on social media I shared the news that I’ve signed a publishing deal for Voting Day in the UK. Fairlight Books came back to me with a yes at the beginning of this year and they will publish their own edition of the book in the UK and Ireland under their Fairlight Moderns novella series next April. If you like your literary fiction on the short side, check out their titles.

It just happens that next year is the centenary of Irish women gaining full and equal voting rights, and I think a book written about the Swiss experience should be of interest to everyone. Women have faced the same problems to a different degree in all patriarchal societies over time. A culture that gives men a disproportionate share of authority, ownership and power breaks the natural partnership between the sexes. We are stuck fighting the same fight over and over – for our safety and dignity, and against economic disadvantage. And I’m not sure we ever will find the lost Eden of true partnership and equality again. But I digress!

There is one more piece of book news relevant for Swiss readers. Up to the end of June, the distribution of Voting Day and the three other language versions was handled by Bergli Books in Basel. From now on, this role will pass to Zytglogge Verlag. Booksellers should still be able to find the book easily in their system and order it for you. Or, if you are a Swiss resident, you can order directly from this website anytime.

I wish all followers of this blog a great summer, hopefully without Covid clouds on the horizon. If, like me, you’re feeling guilty about being fully vaccinated while most of the world is still vulnerable, it might help to donate to this Unicef vaccination campaign.

Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to request a review copy of the book or to talk about possible book events or publicity. Email on contact page. 

The Naked Swiss translations are here!

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Today I am celebrating the good news that the French and German translations of The Naked Swiss: A Nation Behind 10 Myths are out in the world. My copies arrived this week and I am delighted with the look and feel of the new books.

The publication of the translations coincides with the publication of the second edition of the original version, which has an extra chapter on the Swiss relationship with the European Union. For more about the second edition, check out this interview. The books are available online from the publishers Bergli Books and Helvetiq (German, French), from the usual online booksellers and in all good book shops in Switzerland.

The German title is Die Wahre Schweiz, which means the true or the real Switzerland, and the French is La Suisse mise à nu, which means Switzerland laid bare. The subtitles of both are the same: ‘A people and their 10 myths’. It has been a fascinating process working the with the translators to produce a text that was faithful to the original, as well as being crystal clear to readers from other cultures.

Also today, Swiss author Hans Durrer published a glowing review of The Naked Swiss, in which he praised the book as “highly informative”, “profoundly balanced” and “good storytelling”.

And the final bit of good news is the launch of this book trailer, created by Bergli Books. Enjoy!

Second edition giveaway of The Naked Swiss

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When Bergli Books started the preparations for the second edition of The Naked Swiss last year, we had a chat about whether it would be a good idea to add something to the book. In the end I agreed to write a new chapter, one that had been on my original list but that I had run out of time to write.

I’m delighted to announce that the updated second edition is now available online and in shops all over Switzerland. The new chapter is about the Swiss relationship with the European Union. Switzerland is a lot more deeply entwined in the EU than many Swiss people realise.

In the Europe chapter, I explain how Switzerland got to where it is today regarding the EU and how the relationship works. Switzerland and the EU are like the long-term couple who are not married but have been to a lawyer to cobble together most of the equivalent rights and obligations. One of the parties (guess who?) is not happy and is pushing for more commitment. I also explain how the Swiss soon-to-be-defunct bilateral model is not a viable option for the United Kingdom to copy in the brave new post-Brexit world. All the same, you can be sure the British are watching the Swiss very closely to see what new deal they settle for.

As part of the research for the new chapter, I crossed Lake Geneva last summer to spend a night in Thonon-les-Bains on the French side. Early the next morning I set off towards Lausanne with the French cross-border commuters. More on that trip to Thonon-les-Bains in this blog post.

What else is new in the second edition? Well, I updated the statistics and some political developments. The book now has an index and a new author photo (thanks to Elaine Pringle Photography). If you want to be sure you’ve got the right one, it sports a little gold rosette on the cover that reads: NEW EDITION WITH AN 11TH MYTH: THE SWISS ARE EUROPEAN.

The launch of the second edition coincides with the launch of the French and German translations, which are due out on April 30th. I’ll write again when I have a copy of each in my hands. La Suisse mise à nu and Die Wahre Schweiz are available to pre-order this week from Helvetiq. The Swiss language editions have a different cover depicting the roof being lifted off a Swiss chalet. It’s fun and clever. Check it out!

I’m in Ireland at the moment so I haven’t seen the new The Naked Swiss on the shelves. I will send a free book to the first person to post a photo of the second edition in a Swiss bookshop, either to my Twitter account @clareodeaz or on my Facebook page. Happy hunting 😊

My Swiss TV debut on Telezüri

English-speakers are really spoilt in Switzerland, more than any other language group. The locals gladly switch to English at the first opportunity, call centres for banks and insurance companies have English-speaking operators, most websites have an English page, and the state even produces much of its official documentation in English.

Of course that makes it harder to learn the national languages but most of the time it’s an advantage. I’ve written before about the challenges of being a non-native speaker when you live in a foreign country. My language ability varies, mainly depending on levels of confidence and tiredness in a given situation. That’s why is was such a breakthrough for me to accept my first television interview in German and to get through the interview in one piece!

This time last week I was googling tips to prepare for a television interview. Now, the interview is behind me and it’s a huge relief because everything went well. Not that I didn’t make any language mistakes but I managed to make my points clearly and calmly. The 25-minute discussion was broadcast yesterday by Zurich television station Telezüri. The host was Hugo Bigi and I was joined on the Talk Täglich show by fellow Bergli Books writer Wolfgang Koydl, author of Switzerland: A Cartoon Survival Guide. Above is a clip from the interview, and you can view the full programme on this link.

The Telezüri interview was a real case of stepping outside my comfort zone. It was daunting but extremely rewarding. Speaking in public is challenging for many of us, whether it is giving a presentation in work or asking a question in a lecture hall. One of the positive outcomes of writing The Naked Swiss has been that I have been forced to practice public speaking. Now I am at the point that I really enjoy it. It is a privilege to be given a platform to express your ideas, and I am glad to have overcome my fears, as a woman, as a semi-introvert and finally, as a foreigner, so that I can speak up and be heard.

Swiss-based authors: Anne Korkeakivi

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I took a walk on the wild side of Geneva with American author Anne Korkeakivi, the third subject to feature in this swissinfo.ch series of English-language writers based in Switzerland. The author of two novels, Shining Sea and An Unexpected Guest (both published by Little Brown), Anne’s work has been described as “eloquent” and “captivating”.

The New Yorker had a successful career as a journalist before she decided to try out her fiction wings. She stopped producing nonfiction work, taking a job as an editor for a French publishing house, and gave herself twelve months to make a go of fiction. She sold her first story in the eleventh month.

That was the encouragement Anne needed to devote herself to fiction. I spent a morning with Anne, walking through the woods and backroads of Geneva. Having lived abroad for most of her adult life, she is content to live in such an international city. This global spirit is evident in the many different locations Anne features in her work – from Paris to the Philippines to the Hebrides.

Anne’s two novels are very different in scope and tone. The action in the first, An Unexpected Guest, takes place over one day in Paris, as a woman married to a diplomat realises what shaky foundations her well-ordered life is built upon. Shining Sea has a panoramic sweep, following the lives of the large Gannon family over several decades and continents. You’ll find more information about Anne and her work on her website.

Also featured in this series is Susan Jane Gilman, author of The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street and three nonfiction books, as well as Jason Donald, author of Dalila and Choke Chain. There is one more author to come next week to complete the talented quartet.

Where to get your Swiss news in English

 

Because so much big news happens in Switzerland, from peace talks to banking scandals, there is an abundance of Swiss news coverage in international English-speaking media. But if you live here, you will probably be interested in finding reliable sources of news and information relevant to residents.

If you look at home-produced news in English, the pool is relatively small. Here is a guide to some of the main news outlets and what they offer.

The most authoritative and extensive source of Swiss news in English (disclaimer: I worked there from 2005 to 2015) is swissinfo.ch. Bern-based swissinfo.ch, which operated in a previous incarnation as Swiss Radio International, is a unit of the state-funded Swiss broadcasting corporation SRG SSR idée suisse. It provides daily news coverage in ten languages, along with in-depth articles, video news and features, podcasts and galleries.

Swissinfo employs some 40 journalists, Swiss and foreign. Like all news organisations, it is evolving to be more fast-paced and social media-friendly, but it still has a relatively-traditional solid structure with an editor-in-chief, editorial department heads, picture editors etc., all of whom are subject to high professional standards.

Another website providing Swiss news is The Local. This is an English-language digital news publisher offering daily news, business and features, that originated in Sweden in 2004. It now has outlets in nine European countries. Run by a small team, with additional material from freelancers, the editorial style is light and accessible but the information is well-researched by journalists who have a good grasp of Swiss current affairs.

For those who need to keep up with business and financial news, finews.com conveniently translates the daily news written by its staff journalists in Zurich.

World Radio Switzerland (WRS), broadcasting from Geneva, was offloaded by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation in 2013 and is now in private ownership. The station features a diverse mix of programming, including talk radio, magazine, business, culture and music shows. It runs news bulletins and publishes short news stories on the website. There are various ways to listen, detailed here.

WRS and The Local have to be commercially viable, so they also carry advertising and have separate sections featuring property listings and other earning links. The same applies to Le News, which covers national news with a regional focus, catering for people in the Lake Geneva region. Le News publishes a fortnightly newspaper with a large entertainment and events section, which is distributed free in the region.

In the entertainment and lifestyle category, the most prolific site is Newlyswissed.com, which covers culture, design, events and tourism. Newlyswissed regularly features listicles and has a light-hearted and humorous touch, well displayed by the current feature suggesting alternative activities for Valentine’s Day for singles in Zurich. A lot of the content is Zurich-oriented.

Other popular websites aimed at the Zurich market, with a strong what’s-on focus, include New in Zurich, which features many different writers, and Girlfriend Guide to Zurich, which bills itself as the ultimate directory to living in Zurich.

Basel has Basel in English, a one-stop shop of information for English-speaking Basel residents, and The English Show on Radio X from 18.30 to 20.00. And Zug has The Zug Post, a media partner of local newspaper the Zuger Zeitung. Because of its link to a local news player, this site provides more general local news, something it would be good to see more of.

And finally, Hello Switzerland is a comprehensive guide to relocating and living in Switzerland, with a free quarterly magazine in English. All of the above are also active on Facebook.

It’s not easy to make an exhaustive list but I hope I haven’t left out an important news or information provider. Please let me know if there’s a website that should be added to the roll call. And of course, there is an enormous range of news outlets in the local languages which are essential reading if you want to branch outside the English-speaking community. Maybe I’ll do a follow-up post with a guide to Swiss newspapers. A much bigger subject to tackle!

Meanwhile, if you are interested in putting Swiss news in context, check out my nonfiction book, The Naked Swiss: A Nation Behind 10 Myths, published by Bergli Books in October 2016.

All aboard the Swiss-bashing bandwagon

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This week two Swiss newspapers reported on the problem of the “Swiss stare”. Apparently “expats” (I need a separate blog post to explain what I find wrong with this word) have been complaining online about how they dislike it when Swiss people stare at them. The fact that both papers quoted a forum discussion from 2013 gives an indication of how thin this story is.

I am used to Swiss-bashing articles appearing in the English-language media but when I see Swiss newspapers jumping on the bandwagon, I think it is unfortunate, to say the least. All it does is make everyone look bad.

Here’s the interesting part. I heard about the “Swiss stare” when I was contacted by one of the newspapers in question earlier this week, and asked for my take on the issue. I said, honestly, that I had never found it a problem. I’m a bit of a starer myself so maybe I’ve come to live in the right place. In my view, Swiss people in public behave quite like introverts. They are happier to observe others than to draw attention to themselves. That is the group dynamic rather than a reflection of individual characters.

The journalist did not use my answers because they did not fit into the thesis he was presenting. Fair enough. It’s a trivial enough subject and not a serious newspaper so that’s OK. But in the long run, these sorts of stories have a cumulative negative impact, and this is one of the reasons I was motivated to write The Naked Swiss. This quote is from chapter one:

Particularly in the English-speaking world, but also among Germans, there is a great appetite for ‘aren’t they strange’ cultural commentary stories about the Swiss. As a general rule, any piece that makes the Swiss appear ridiculous or sinister, or both, is welcome. The result is a caricature of the cat-eating, obsessively recycling, robotically-dull and silly rule-making Swiss that has been so carefully constructed over years that it may never be dismantled. It’s tough being the rich kid of Europe.

Is there any point in me pointing out that this is a multi-cultural country with a much higher proportion of foreigners than the UK or US (13% in each)? One in four people living in Switzerland are foreign-born. That proportion could well be higher on public transport. How do you even know if the person who stared at you on the train that time is Swiss?

But even if it is a real thing that Swiss people do above all others, I’m not sure why this has to be a problem. When I travel, I neither want nor expect the rest of the world to behave like Irish people. I have never been under the illusion that the Irish way is the defining way of behaviour worldwide. Maybe this is a big country / small country thing. If you don’t count Irish pubs, Ireland has never attempted to dominate the world (or indeed any other country) with its norms and culture. I wonder if it is easier to accept differences in other places if you come from a smaller, more insignificant country, or is it mainly down to the individual’s capacity to accept change and adapt?

In the introduction to my book, I quote Siri Hustvedt who said “no person leaves themselves behind in order to look at a painting”. Our individual responses to a work of art depend on who we are, our character. I think the same applies to our individual responses to a country as immigrants.

So, what can you tell me about the “Swiss stare”? Is it real or imagined? Does it make you dislike the Swiss in general? Or could it happen anywhere? I would love to hear some different perspectives on this from anyone who has experience of living in another culture.