The Peacock : Writing Scotland...In translation

Mix yourself a hot toddy, have your hot water bottle at the ready – and be thankful that you don’t have to make small talk with your colleagues!

With the launch of Isabel Bogdan’s The Peacock in English translation, we’re taking you on a teambuilding trip to a small glen at the foot of the Highlands… An antagonistic boss, an aggressive peacock, and a quirky, characterful old pile in rural Scotland: what could possibly go wrong?

Settle in for an evening with author Isabel Bogdan and translator Annie Rutherford as they chat to publisher Katy Derbyshire about the novel, fail hopelessly at drawing boats, and make some noise about why we need more funny books in translation.

And they might even ask you a few questions, if you fancy joining in. We’ll also be setting the mood with a couple of folk songs from the fantastic Christine Kydd.

Isabel Bogdan was born in Cologne and studied English and Japanese. She is an enthusiastic Hamburgdweller, reader, writer and translator into German (including Jane Gardam, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nick Hornby, Jasper Fforde). Her first book, Sachen machen, came out in 2012, followed in 2016 by The Peacock, and in 2019 by Laufen. She has won prizes for her translating, her writing and the online interview project “Was machen die da?”

Annie Rutherford champions poetry and translated literature both through her work at StAnza, Scotland’s international poetry festival, and as a writer and translator. 2021 also sees the publication of her translations of Volha Hapeyeva's poetry, In My Garden of Mutants. She blogs for the Goethe-Institut, co-hosts Free Vers(e), an occasional podcast on queer poetry, and runs the Women in Translation book club for Lighthouse Bookshop.

Christine Kydd is one of Scotland’s best- loved and most experienced singers and educators in Scots and contemporary song. Her latest CD Shift & Change on Greentrax, on best-seller list since its launch in 2019 has met with critical acclaim. For a decade a tutor at the Centre for Excellence in Traditional Music, Christine was inducted in 2018 in to the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame.