Novel Encounters: Publishing Yvonne Vera in the West
Novelist Yvonne Vera was born in Zimbabwe in 1964, began writing fiction in the early 1990s while a doctoral student in Canada, and wrote until her death in 2005. She is considered a best-selling writer in her native country (although that only means that she has sold hundreds to thousands of her volumes, not millions), and all of her works have been released in North America as well. I am interested in her publication here, in the United States, in particular her four novels originally published in Zimbabwe and released in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux—Without a Name, Under the Tongue (published together in one volume), Butterfly Burning, and The Stone Virgins. I would like to explore Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s decision to publish Vera in the West and answer the following questions: What did Farrar, Straus, and Giroux envision as the market for her books, and does that market actually exist? Did the publisher ask for editorial changes prior to publishing Vera’s works in the United States? Is the book I am reading the same that the Zimbabwean audience reads? Part of my examination will entail looking at sales figures, if possible, as well as Vera’s general reception in the United States (how her work was reviewed). By conducting this study, I hope to gain a sense of the ramifications of the global marketplace for publishing.
Keywords: Vera, Yvonne, authorship, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Zimbabwe, global publishing, writers and readers
Melissa R. Root
PhD Candidate, Department of English, University of Denver
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Ref: B06P0223