Writers, even if writing a retelling of an old fable or myth, immerse themselves in the works of others to emerge with work inextricably linked to what has been read and connected with (or not) but new. I think I was trying to write my own Pale Fire while writing my novel Vehicle, because I believed Nabokov’s novel was the greatest thing I’d read in my twenties, but I couldn’t (and wouldn’t) have written Pale Fire for many reasons. Nabokov’s novel gave me inspiration and courage to write something only I could have written as a response and an echo through time, space and sensibility.

I’m often asked as a literary translator what book I would love to translate if I had the chance, sometimes at events or in interviews, but mostly and crucially by commissioning editors hoping for a hot tip for a book they might like to publish, and this is a whole other kettle of fish (ein ganz anderes Paar Schuhe / a completely different pair of shoes, or, das steht auf einem anderen Blatt / that’s on a different page).

As literary translators, we do get to make a work we love, from scratch, ourselves. We get to write a book again, try to imagine what motivated and prompted a writer to write what they did, what mood they were in, what tone they were going for. I’ve translated books I was a superfan of, and there’s no better dizzying thrill. It’s made me an enthusiastic translator, and a better writer. The closest other creative process I can compare it to is an actor getting to perform a famous role that inspired them to go into acting. You get to perform and shape every utterance, it’s your conscious or subconscious interpretation of a piece you know deeply that is unavoidably, magically, touched by you.

Because this question regarding a book we’d love to translate can arise when we least expect it, most literary translators have a book or two up their sleeve, ready to pitch. I’ve been saying the same book for the last decade or so. It was one of the first books I read with comparative ease in German, and I suppose now I’ve read hundreds of books in German that part of my attachment to it is this fact; the deeply meaningful experience of really reading a novel in a foreign language for the first time has made it very precious to me.

I was a magazine intern when I was asked to write a review of Wann wird es endlich wieder so, wie es nie war (When will it finally be like it never was again) by the German theatre actor-turned-memoirist Joachim Meyerhoff, and it soon became an obsession. I wrote the review high on having read a masterpiece. I even contacted the German publisher to ask for permission to translate an excerpt to publish in my own DIY literary journal. And I’ve never let it go.

The book’s about Meyerhoff’s childhood, living on the grounds of an institution for young people with various unspecified mental illnesses and psychological disorders where his father was the director. The book is incredibly funny and moving, recalling with deep vulnerability and in great detail what it felt like to be a child completely at home with his surroundings and the residents, while describing his family, himself very much included, with their habits and airs as incredibly strange and dysfunctional. Having grown up visiting my own mother and brother in similar spaces, I felt a deep kinship with child-Meyerhoff through adult Meyerhoff’s writing.

It's a hard sell, of course – an actor who only does theatre and who no one in the Anglophone world has heard of, about a residential hospital for the kinds of people usually disparaged or ignored in literature, the middle-aged European memoir series market clearly (according to a few agents and editors) already taken by Knausgård and Fosse. There have been moments when there was interest, but it’s always come to nothing.

Though I always lead with Wann wird…, in actual fact, over the years, my answer has grown to include his whole series of memoirs, of which Wann wird… is the second, and the most recent, Man kann auch in die Höhe fallen (You can also fall up), is the sixth. Over the years, his publisher has commissioned me to translate excerpts from two more of his books to try and sell the rights, and I’ve read each book when they’ve come out, amazed anew each time.

I recently bought book six while in Vienna from the two-hundred-year-old university bookshop Franz Leo & Comp., spotting its jutting out chrome sign for BÜCHER across the street while walking back to my hotel. Meyerhoff’s books are the only books I would fork out nearly thirty euros for (it’s still in hardback), and I felt a genuine rush of excitement to have it; I almost felt disappointed that the bookseller didn’t acknowledge it, that there wasn’t a queue out the door, and that it was a bright sunny morning and not midnight.

I’m reading this new Meyerhoff now and he’s done it again.

It’s about his having a kind of nervous breakdown after leaving Vienna for Berlin then abandoning the city to go live with his mother. Translation means I can immediately recreate the opening lines that is Meyerhoff’s writing and my writing simultaneously:

Is this like painting the corner of a beloved painting, or perhaps a miniature version? Enough to give a flavour of the style, just a taste. I translated this in about a minute, opting for ‘fit as a fiddle’ for ‘kerngesund’, but I could have gone with ‘fit as a butcher’s dog’, or ‘sound as a bell’, or something more straightforward like ‘perfectly healthy / fine’. That’s what I wrote down automatically. I also know Meyerhoff so well after reading his books and translating him that I can adopt the voice I honed for him in translation intuitively and with confidence.

Right at the end of a Zoom meeting with an editor about a potential book translation before the summer, they asked me: ‘Oh, by the way – if you could translate any book, what would it be?’

I hadn’t been asked this question in a few years, but the familiar rush of words came out, if a little slower than it used to. The editor said Meyerhoff sounded interesting, and to send over what I had. After the meeting, I dusted off my Meyerhoff folder. The reports and translated excerpts I’d written for three of his books, including Wann wird…, were a bit old, so I quickly read through them all, and I found myself laughing and marvelling at his writing through my own writing all over again. I attached them to an email, sent it off.

The editor replied to the email later the same day. I thought it was an acknowledgment of my having sent the materials, but they said that they had read everything and had loved it. They were excited!

But I can’t be, not yet, I’ve been here before. I’m still waiting to find out if I’ll get to make Meyerhoff myself. Ich drücke mir die Daumen (I’m pressing my thumbs / crossing my fingers).