Parthian Books

Parthian Books works in partnership with Il Caduceo literary agency in Genoa who represents their writers in translation. Parthian has developed translation links throughout Europe and beyond, and its books have appeared in fifteen foreign language editions including French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Danish, Portuguese and Russian.[7] Parthian has also recently announced its first book deal with New Star publications in China for the thriller The Colour of a Dog Running Away by Richard Gwyn.

As with his debut short fiction collection, All The Places We Lived, The Serbian language rights for Richard Owain Roberts' debut novel, The Guardian's Not The Booker prize winning Hello Friend We Missed You, have been acquired by Partizanska Knjiga, the first time Parthian Books have sold foreign translation rights ahead of English language publication.[8] According to the publishing editor, "Roberts follows Jarett Kobek, Ben Lerner and Miranda July as the latest English-language novelist to have his work translated into Serbian."[9]

Parthian also publishes titles translated into English, such as To Bury the Dead, Under the Dust, The Bridge Over the River, Strange Language, Martha, Jac and Shanco from Basque, Catalan, German, Spanish and Welsh. In 2015, the publisher launched the Europa Carnivale series, with the intention of releasing translations of works originally published in German, Polish, Slovak, Spanish and Turkish.[10]

In 2016, Parthian was awarded money by the India Wales Fund for a collaborative literature project called The Valley, The City, The Village.[11] The project will see the publication in 2018 of a writing anthology curated by three Welsh writers and three Indian writers. In early 2017, the three Welsh writers visited India to engage with the culture and take part in writing and reading events. In spring 2017, the three Indian authors will visit Wales. The project is being run in collaboration with Bee Books, an English publisher in Kolkata, India.[12] The writers will blog about their experiences, and make use of them for the anthology.[13]

Since its foundation in 1993, Parthian and its titles have regularly received recognition through award nominations. Welsh Boys Too, a collection of short stories by John Sam Jones, was named as a 'Stonewall Honor Book in Literature' in 2002,[14] and in 2003 Lewis Davies' Work, Sex and Rugby picked up the World Book Day Award for Wales.[15] The Long Dry, the debut novel from Cynan Jones, won the Betty Trask Award in 2007.[16]

In 2020, Richard Owain Roberts won The Guardian's Not The Booker Prize for his debut novel Hello Friend We Missed You.[17] The competition judge, Sam Jordison, described it as "the gem of the shortlist"[18] and as "formally daring, very funny, a writer of real talent and potential."[19]

In 2006, Parthian author Rachel Trezise became the first recipient of the Dylan Thomas Prize for her short story collection Fresh Apples.[20] Following this success in the inaugural award, two further Parthian titles have been nominated for the £30,000 prize: Jemma L. King's poetry collection The Shape of a Forest in 2013 and Alys Conran's novel Pigeon in 2017.

Parthian has also enjoyed success in the Wales Book of the Year, an award given annually to the best Welsh and English language works by Welsh or Welsh interest authors. Deborah Kay Davies gave the publisher its first win in 2009 with her short story collection Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful.[21] Further wins followed in 2011 (with John Harrison's Cloud Road)[22] and in 2017 (with Alys Conran's Pigeon).[23] Parthian's record of three Wales Book of the Year awards is matched by Faber, and only bettered by Seren.

Many award-winning individual short stories and poems have later been included in Parthian collections. Most notably, these include 'Mr. Roopratna's Chocolate' from Lewis Davies' Love and Other Possibilities, which won the Rhys Davies Prize in 1999,[24] and 'Moon Dog' from Rebecca F John's Clown's Shoes, which won the PEN International New Voices Award in 2015.[25] Since 2012, Parthian has published Cheval: the annual Terry Hetherington Award anthology.[26] Many of the winners of this award, including Mari Ellis Dunning, Natalie Ann Holborow, Jemma L. King and Joâo Morais, have later released their debut publications with Parthian.[27][28][29][30]

• Parthian
• Library of Wales series