Marharyta Rivchachenko in conversation with the publisher Svitlana Pryzynchuk about different worldviews, the perception of Asian literature in a rather conservative Ukrainian book market oriented toward Europe, the state of oriental studies in Ukraine, and the achievements and plans of her publishing house.
How many Chinese poets can you name? Perhaps you’ve read Korean comics or admire the works of Taiwanese writers? Then you must definitely have heard of Safran publishing specializing in Asian literature.
Ever since its establishment, our press has focused on Asia, a vast territory with many countries whose cultures and ways of life significantly differ from ours. It all goes back to my background—I spent almost six years living in China. In 2015, I returned to Ukraine for good, and I was restless to do anything related to sinology. I’ve loved reading since I was a little girl, so when new publishing houses started to pop up in the following eighteen months, I followed this process closely. Then, I felt the need to publish books of the kind not yet available in Ukraine. Back at the time, you could barely find any books about Asia here, and even if you did, the print runs were tiny. But now, as you can see, Asian literature is becoming more and more relevant and accessible in Ukraine. Young people love K-pop, and Korean makeup has become trendy. Everything Korean has a wow effect here, but I knew about it for a long time. In China, they were hype as early as the late 2000s.
I find it hard to say anything about it right now, as initially I didn’t think about this business as a commercial venture. As someone outside the book industry, I just didn't know the market well. People who worked in publishing houses or established their own presses would’ve had a completely different vision. But I did most of the things intuitively. Before the official launch, I spent two and a half years hashing out the idea. Our story was nothing like, «Oh, it just dawned on me, so I scribbled down a business plan and went on to sell books». No. I preferred to do things slowly and thoroughly, and I knew this business was not a piece of cake. Our publishing house had been only nine months on the market when the first lockdown was announced.
By that point, we’d established certain partnerships in Asia. I can’t say I pursued them very actively (I was home with a baby at the time), but I still went on several business trips to China. Many of my friends live there. I told them about my plans to set up a press specializing in Asian literature. I should mention that back in the day, barely any Asian books had been translated into Ukrainian. For about five years, Sun Tzu’s «The Art of War», translated by Serhiy Lesniak, a good friend of mine, was the only book from the East out there. And it’s still popular. It was published by Old Lion Publishing House in 2015 and has been ranked as one of the top twenty on Ye Bookstore list ever since. The number of Japanese translations was slightly bigger.
Our book market is very Eurocentric, and it’s only logical—we are located in the heart of Europe. But we are too local. Even our neighbor, Poland, follows a more global approach. Polish reportage literature often deals with Africa and other faraway lands. They have always been more open to the world. Ryszard Kapuściński is the most famous reporter in Europe. In «A Reporter’s Self-Portrait», he wrote: «My key goal is to show the Europeans that our worldview is very Eurocentric… That Europe is surrounded with an immense dynamic mixture of cultures, societies, religions, and civilizations».
It’s important to read the national literature and love what’s yours, but we’re too deeply invested in that. «What does the world know about Ukraine?» we wonder. But first, we should answer another question: «What does Ukraine know about the world?» It’s always a two-way street. We want people to know something about Ukraine other than stereotypes or war stories. But these are the only things they’re familiar with. Even Shevchenko is hardly known. That’s why we’re moving outwards, opening new names for Ukrainians.
Initially, we didn’t worry about profit. It was crucial to stay afloat. We did our best, and I’m thrilled that we made it. Lots of effort have been invested in that. We were relentless in our search of new opportunities and partnerships. Our press began working with Taiwan, resumed cooperation with Japan, and attempted collaboration with Korea. In 2021, after being rejected for two years in a row, we finally received a grant from Japan Foundation to translate «The Quilt. Novel and Short Prose» by Tayama Katai, a Japanese classic of the 20th century.
Our books are much more expensive to produce than those published by many other presses, and it’s our biggest challenge. Translations from Asian languages are costly. And design should be up to standard, too.
Today, many Ukrainian presses publish books about Asia. But these are sporadic publications. To do it systematically, you need to bring together many professionals. We always put people first and money second. 99% of orientalists and speakers of Asian languages are not freelance translators. They all have full-time jobs, teaching at universities or working at various companies. None of them lives from translation. So, if you want them to translate a book for you, you have to stir their interest. It’s a matter of a decent fee or personal arrangements when someone is eager to translate a particular book (in that case, they might be more flexible about the payment). People we work with are passionate about what they do. Asian languages are so hard to learn (you just can’t do it on the go) that you will never master them unless you really love it or feel that it’s your kind of thing.
If we talk about particular countries, there’s hardly any correlation between sales figures and the news. There are only two books about Afghanistan in the Ukrainian book market: «The Kite Runner» by Khaled Hosseini, published by Old Lion Publishing House, and «The Bookseller of Kabul» by Asne Seierstad, printed by Nash Format. A while ago, we started a conversation with a French agent representing Atiq Rahimi, a well-known Afghan writer who moved to France. But the negotiations failed because our press was little known back then. Rahimi’s «Syngué Sabour» («The Patience Stone») was awarded Prix Goncourt in 2008. Russian translation is available, of course. In France, 300,000 copies of this book have been sold—it’s a bestseller. The French found this book fascinating—wow, it’s about Afghanistan!—but our people see it as something weird.
And I see it like this. In the colonial countries—the UK, France, or Russia—oriental studies are well-developed, and there are publishing houses specializing in Asian literature. These imperial powers conquered the East, hence their long-standing interest in it. But in the former colonies, like Ukraine back in the USSR times, oriental studies were banned. Ahatanhel Krymsky was the last orientalist to be persecuted in 1942. If you wanted to study an Asian language in Soviet Ukraine, you had only three options: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, or Vladivostok. By the 1990s, when the USSR collapsed, and Asia’s economy started to grow, Russia had been studying the Asian countries for a long while. And they were geographically close, too.
We still have no idea how to work with these countries, in particular, on the political level. To make any conclusions about China, you have to understand it first. Only a handful of employees of the Ukrainian embassy in Beijing speak Chinese. What kind of understanding are we talking about? We’re no match for the United States, to be sure, but let me just say that almost every diplomat working at the huge US embassy in China speaks Chinese.
Now, there are Asian studies departments, language schools, and exchange programs. But around 50% of their graduates stay in China, another 30% move elsewhere, and 20% at best return to Ukraine. It’s like this with all Asian languages, not only Chinese. The Ukrainian embassy in Korea has only eight employees. And Korea is one of the most developed countries not just in Asia but in the whole world. To keep calm and stop lamenting «Chinese will conquer the world!» at every turn, you must know these people really well. It’s one of the basic rules laid out by Sun Tzu—go read his book. You must know your enemy. It’s especially urgent for Ukraine.
I am an orientalist myself, and I met quite a few professionals in those two and half years I’d spent preparing the ground for Safran publishing. I knew many of them by that time, too. Our community is relatively small, and most of us know each other. I asked my friends in Ukraine and China to introduce me to people who might be interested in the idea of a publishing house. So, they made introductions, and I met with them. Our first projects and plans were born during those conversations. Some of the introductions led to cooperation; others did not. I still keep an Excel table with the list of translators who work with languages ranging from Hindi to Korean.
Chinese, English, and Czech. We also plan to publish translations from Japanese and Korean. Experts often turn to us first since we’re the only publisher of Asian literature in Ukraine. Ukrainian orientalists living abroad contact us, too. For example, in June 2021, we published «The Stories of the Sahara» by Sanmao, a Taiwanese writer. It was translated by Alina Doricheva who’s based in Canada but used to live in China. Alina emailed us saying that she’d written her thesis about Sanmao’s writing, and for the past decade, she’d been dreaming of translating this book—iconic for millions of readers in China and Taiwan. All that to say that translators—who live worldwide, from Mexico to Japan—are seeking cooperation with us.
We always add commentaries and footnotes. Our press offers a range of book series: classics, contemporary literature, and children’s. You will often find footnotes even in books for children. However, we usually go for endnotes not to overburden the young readers. In this way, we also cater to their parents or the children themselves after they grow up and look back at these books from a different angle. For instance, «The Monkey King», published in «The Legends of China» series and presented at the International Book Arsenal Festival in 2021, is a children’s story with asterisks dotting the text. Its protagonist is not just a monkey with a superpower, as it might seem at first sight. It’s the legendary hero of entire Asia, the most prominent one! There’s a whole bunch of anime, games, movies, and comics about him. That’s why we included two spreads of endnotes in the book to explain this hero’s significance.
And this is what makes us special, I think. Our print run is far from three thousand copies. It’s just your regular thousand, maybe more for some books. We don’t mass-produce non-fiction. However, keeping the profit in mind, we have recently launched a series of Asian comics. They might have larger print runs.
First of all, young people. We do have middle-aged and senior readers, too. But the core of our readership are people aged 18 and up—starting from students. It was not clear from the get-go what kind of audience we shall target. But young people were the first to visit our book stand at the International Book Arsenal Festival. This audience is interested in Japan, Korea, and China. China not so much perhaps, but we understand the reason perfectly well. Still, our books have stirred up interest in this country, as well as in Taiwan.
Sure, and they’ve already done so. We have published a book by Kateryna Zavertailo, who lived in China for eleven years and received her PhD there. Kateryna wrote a book about Chinese cuisine, and she did it from a fascinating angle. It’s her first book, but she has already demonstrated a natural writing talent. We published it amid the pandemic when people were claiming that the Chinese ate a bat, and the coronavirus outbreak happened. «The Ants Climbing a Tree» is a kind of food travelogue. Kateryna describes the universe of Chinese cuisine, ruining the myths and describing various dishes and their recipes. The book includes a didactic chart with the names of food and their translations and transcriptions. So, coming to a Chinese restaurant in Ukraine or China, you will be able to order food and know what you’ll get. Before the lockdown, a lot of Ukrainians traveled to China, and if a restaurant had a menu without pictures, they had to order blindly.
Kateryna is an expert orientalist, whereas Tetiana Vovk, another Ukrainian author we collaborated with on «88 Ornaments of Kimono», has nothing to do with Asian studies. Tetiana is an art critic and textile manufacturing technician. A kimono collector, she has been studying kimono for years. She owns the KimonoUA brand and imports vintage kimonos to Ukraine. At first, Tetiana gathered materials and worked on the text independently. Then she collaborated with Daryna Trotsan, editor and orientalist. We also invited Svitlana Rybalko to write an introduction and join the project as an academic editor. Originally from Kharkiv, Svitlana is Ukraine’s leading expert in Japanese art. This collaboration resulted in a thoroughly researched visual book.
No one could have written it better than Tetiana, as she has a unique experience—hundreds of kimonos have passed through her hands over the years. Perhaps, she was unfamiliar with some transcriptions or other Japanese particularities, but the academic editor was there to track and fix that. The resulting publication was just gorgeous.
People are more or less familiar with the classics, but contemporary literature remains unknown. Yet, the interest in it is growing. «Decoded», the first book from our contemporary literature series, was a hard sell. We presented it at Book Forum in Lviv in 2019 and sold only twenty copies.
But after we published another two books from the same series, the interest in that first publication perked up. Now we have a complete set—«The Contemporary Literature of Asia». In fact, the second and the third books boosted the sales of the first one. The demand for contemporary fiction clearly overrides that for classics. But it took some time and, to paraphrase Ivan Franko, the smashing of the Great Wall of China. (Laughing). We collaborated with bloggers and Instagrammers and tried to come up with creative posts on our Telegram channel. But it’s tough to set new trends in Ukraine. I’d say that 75% of our readers live in Kyiv, and the rest 25% elsewhere in Ukraine. That’s why the International Book Arsenal Festival has always been a success for us, since it’s our target audience for 150%.
All publishers faced a drop in offline sales during the lockdown. People usually buy online. But offline exhibitions are a must-have. The emotional factor driving book sales is only growing stronger. People are eager to come and explore, read a few pages, and see what it feels like to hold the book in their hands. Design, paper, book cover—all of it has to be experienced offline. Our portfolio includes «Himalayan Stories». It is slow-selling online, but at the International Book Arsenal Festival it landed as one of our top five bestsellers. «How come?» you might wonder. This book has unique design—it was created with the use of Coptic binding. It comes with an exposed spine, five-colored threads running through it. You can open it at 180 degrees. You just have to see it. When people hold this book in their hands, they normally decide to buy it. An offline contact between the book and the readers is crucial.
Perhaps even in a decade. I see this trend among the young people. Older generations associate Asia with China, communists, or the Made in China label. But its perception has been changing steadily. This process, just like many others, is rather slow. It takes a while to get used to contemporary Ukrainian books in general. People are just forming a habit of reading in Ukrainian and buying books. And they are gradually discovering new things and interests. That’s why publishers urge to promote book reading culture.
We’re planning to develop our book series, in particular, comics. For the past two years, we have been building our reputation. It cost us a lot, but now there’s a community of loyal readers ready to buy our new books even if the topics sound unfamiliar to them. They just trust our publishing house. Some readers have bought all the books we published. In late April 2021, we announced purchase of the license for «Guardienne», a new Taiwanese manhua, and ComicCon Ukraine immediately invited us to participate in their festival. People text us saying they’re looking forward to our new publications. Many of them follow us on social media. MangUa did a podcast with us. Until recently, there were no licensed Asian comics in Ukraine. Japanese publishers refused to sell licenses to Ukrainian presses as the local market was teeming with pirated editions. It’s only lately that my colleagues started to smash this cliff. It took over a year for some of them to negotiate certain titles. Each of these presses contributes to the development of the comics market in Ukraine. So, we intend to publish more comics from Taiwan and Korea. Japan is in our plans, too.
Our publishing house is focused on Asia, so we’re keeping away from the issues or authors dealing exclusively with Europe or the United States. Ameri- and Eurocentric authors are not that interesting to us. However, there are many good authors in the West writing about Asia. So, we might explore that option. Has it ever happened that the popularity of, let’s say, Chinese author in Ukraine has skyrocketed after they got published in Ukrainian? It has never happened so far. But some of our contemporary books are long- and bestsellers. For example, Lu Yu’s «The Classic of Tea» is the only book about tea in Ukraine, and we’ve been selling it quite well for the past two years. But I can’t say that it ‘skyrocketed.’ It’s just that this kind of literature happens to be in demand. Hipsters—but not only them—love tea and enjoy tea ceremonies. That’s why this book remains so popular.
What book would you take to a desert island? Something by Bruno Schulz. I have many favorite books but I should see a whole universe behind the lines to pick them up again… I read his «Cinnamon Shops» a while ago, and it was total immersion into a magical world. I also enjoy historical novels (that’s why we published «The Stolen Bicycle», an excellent Taiwanese historical fiction). I’m in love with the Balkans—it’s an incredible mix of West and East. So, I might as well take «The Bridge on the Drina» by Ivo Andrić. It is a gorgeous historical and philosophical panorama of the Balkans spanning four centuries: from thriving Ottoman Empire up to World War I. Andrić was awarded the Nobel prize for this novel. You feel a beautiful nostalgic aftertaste for a long time after you finish it. «Oh no! It’s the end, and there’s no other book like that», you think, sadly. I see it as a proof that this book is worth taking to a desert island to relish it there.
Non-fiction might be more useful, but I rarely read it. It’s fabulous that Ukrainian non-fiction presses keep growing. At the same time, our publishing focuses on fiction, as fiction writing is a great art.
By Marharyta Rivchachenko
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