New English translation brings acclaimed French author Clémentine Mélois to anglophone readers

Clémentine Mélois’s Dehors, la Tempête (Outside, the Storm) was nominated for the 2026 Prix Goncourt.

The latest work by an acclaimed French author who was nominated for France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt is now available to anglophone readers thanks to a new translation by an academic at the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures.

Dr Terry Bradford, Senior Lecturer at the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, has translated Clémentine Mélois’s Dehors, la Tempête (Outside, the Storm) into English for a new edition which has just been published by the New York-based Keruanserai Press. This marks the first English-language edition of Mélois’s book about bibliophilia and includes a final page omitted from the original French release.

 

Mélois, who was among the final four writers nominated for this year’s Prix Goncourt prize for literature – for her novel Choses que Je Croyais Perdues (Things That I Thought Were Lost) – is a prominent figure in contemporary French culture and has won legions of fans for her experimental and humorous works that combine visual art and literature. Bradford’s translation of Outside, the Storm is his second adaptation of Mélois work (after Otherwise I Forget) and seeks to introduce her playful prose style to a wider international audience.

Keruanserai Press is hosting an online book launch for Dehors, la Tempête on 21 November at 5pm GMT (12pm Eastern Time), featuring a conversation with Mélois and Bradford. Register here.

Alongside the Mélois release, Bradford has two further translations slated for publication in the coming months by US publisher Purple Bearded Uncle. The two volumes, Cauchemars (Nightmares) and Frissons (Shivers), gather 42 short stories by André de Lorde, the early 20th-century French playwright known as the "Prince of Terror".

Below, Dr Terry Bradford discusses the intricacies of translating Mélois, navigating copyright hurdles, and his upcoming research projects.

What do you like about Mélois' work?

I first found out about Clémentine Mélois through the success of her first book, Cent Titres (Grasset, 2014). That book – an exquisite combination of witty text, wordplay, and gently parodic artwork – could be adapted to fit a British context, but it defies translation… I’ll try to explain. In it, Mélois takes iconic covers of 100 French editions of classics and lovingly tinkers with the images and/or words. An example: she takes a well-known cover of Boris Vian’s Surreal classic L’Ecume des Jours (literally, The Froth of the Days) and leaves the artwork intact. However, her version is now signed Boris Viande (“Meat”) and the title is Légume des jours (which I could translate loosely as “Daily veg”). Each cover is accompanied by a mischievous comment that adds another layer to her “disruptive” (and very entertaining) methods.

I wouldn’t presume to come up with anything as funny or interesting as Mélois’ originals, but one example – Herman Melville’s Moby Dick – lends itself quite easily to adaptation. Mélois – with cunning sleight of hand – turns Moby Dick into Maudit Bic (literally, “Damn Pen”). The iconic whale of the folio edition has been replaced by furious scribbling (as if trying to get the “damn pen” to work). Imagine the same scribble on the front of a Penguin or Oxford Classic, and the Mélois-esque title in English could be Moody Bic.

I’ve kept abreast of her work since then, and what I like about her longer – more recent – prose pieces is the style. It’s playful, gentle, generous, witty, human, self-deprecatory, and accessible.

What did you enjoy about translating Dehors, la Tempête?

I’ve described Dehors, la tempête (Grasset, 2020) – “Outside, the Storm” – as “a book about books, for people who love books.” As a book-lover, I was bound to enjoy it. And translating it allowed me to enjoy it, many times over.

Mélois quotes a lot of songs and poetry, and I particularly enjoy translating texts that rhyme – achieving that convincingly while capturing the sense or feel of the original is always challenging. So, that was fun. In this work, her writing is at turns charmingly silly, overtly funny, but also poignant and philosophical. Remaining consciously sensitive to pace, ambiance, and effect is very much what I enjoy about translating, so – again – this was a great text to work on.

Did you encounter any professional challenges with this translation? Anything you've not encountered before? If so, what were they?

I’d say the biggest challenge new to me – or raft of challenges – came towards the end of the process. My US-based publisher, Marco Ramírez Rojas, was concerned – quite rightly – about copyright. French writers can quote with impunity, and Mélois embraces this, liberally quoting songs, novels, songs in novels, and poetry. However, laws on the use of intellectual property are different in the US – inclusion willy-nilly of all the original quotations could have led to a series of lawsuits. With that in mind, Marco sought out permissions and succeeded in obtaining a good number, thus allowing us to retain them. But in many cases, I had to omit the quotations and adapt the text so anglophone readers could get the intended sense and effect(s).

Another specific challenge arose halfway through the book when Mélois the narrator – for it is, in part, an autobiographical text – gets a case (self-diagnosed) of “citationitis”. Her prose becomes a “mash-up” of lines from the poets Baudelaire, Aragon, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Francis Ponge, the singer-songwriter Jean-Jacques Goldman, and the playwright Jean Racine. I wouldn’t usually consider “domesticating” my translation, but in this instance, I did. For copyright reasons or because I felt the French literary references were too specific and obscure, in some cases I “swapped” them for recognisably English references. We even decided to add translator’s end-notes for that passage (another thing I usually avoid!), to ensure readers had the opportunity – discreetly – to appreciate Mélois’ linguistic and cultural virtuosity.

In brief, what's your process for translating a new work? Do you read the book in full first? Do you work methodically page by page? Somewhere in between?

Ordinarily, I would read a piece – at least once – before even beginning to translate it. As I tell my students, there’s no point in attempting to translate anything if you don’t understand it. Also, I have to be sure that I like the book – its story, its characters, its values, its message – before I invest my time, energy, and passion in it. But another big part of my preparation would involve reading other of the writer’s works, and researching their life and the literary scene they were in. For example, with the obscure Belgian Dadaist Clément Pansaers (whose works I’ve translated and had published by Wakefield Press), I read whatever research was “out there” – that enabled me to “get” (inter-)textual references to other writers (including Carl Einstein, whom I’d never heard of), forgotten painters, and events I certainly never learnt about in History.

As for method, yes, I translate page by page. Some translators play what’s called the “slash game”, leaving options/alternatives for later revision. I prefer to avoid doing that, not least because my first draft can go through up to – say – eight or ten drafts anyway before it’s ready for printing. That’s why I also prefer to not leave gaps. On extremely rare occasions, I do leave gaps – but only when an expression or a passage has me utterly flummoxed. Sometimes, only a combination of time, further (extensive) research, and a smidgeon of inspiration can help fill in those gaps.

Are there any writers whose work you haven't translated but have a particular desire to?

I’ve had translations of two novels by Boris Vian published, but I would love to keep translating him. I’d particularly love to translate his cult-classic, L’Ecume des jours, mentioned earlier! Two English-language translations were published in the 1960s, and Vian will soon be out of copyright, so maybe the time is right for a new translation.

Other than that, I want to translate (marginal) writers who’ve been “forgotten”. I’m currently working through the poetry of Saint-Pol-Roux – he’s a good example of a “forgotten” poet: a celebrity and a massive influence on Surrealism in the 1920s, he’s barely known, today. But it’s important to me that I don’t just translate white, middle-/upper-class males, so I’m consciously on the look-out – for example – for interesting women writers (whether erased from literary history, like Clémence Robert, or with an important contemporary message, such as the French-Canadian writer Maude Jarry).

What are you working on next?

I’ve a few books in the pipeline. At the moment, I’m most looking forward to post-editing my translation of Jane de La Vaudère’s 1908 Sapho, dompteuse (“Sapho, Tamer of Beasts”) for Snuggly Books / Purple Bearded Uncle. It’s a raunchy, rip-roaring, action-packed novel with loads of social commentary on women in society, mental health, crime, and the legal system.

As I say, I’m slowly translating Saint-Pol-Roux – it’s prose poetry, so not as tough as having to marry sense and rhyme! I’ve also got a novel by Joseph Péladan “on the go”. And apart from that, I’ll indulge occasionally – on a slightly more ad-hoc basis – in creating shorter translations which find a welcoming home in Typo: the international journal of prototypes, edited by Norman Conquest and Paul Rosheim. My relationship with the editors has evolved such that they will suggest names of writers of interest to them, I’ll look into them, and – if I like what I find – provide the journal with a few translations, usually with a little translator’s introduction.