“I started out as an ordinary translator, working mainly in the social and cultural fields,” she explains. She soon got involved in the Flemish literary magazine Deus ex machina, translating fragments by German writer Julia Franck, and later Juli Zeh and Olivier Rolin.

“It’s very hard for a Flemish person to break into the market,” she says. This is largely because all of the big Dutch-language publishing houses are in Amsterdam, but also “books have to be translated into standard Dutch,” she explains, “which for a Flemish person requires two steps – from the original language to our own language, which is Flemish, and then into standard Dutch.”

Things are different for the authors. While both Dutch and Flemish TV often use subtitles for Flemish people, writers can get away with a lot more. “Dimitri Verhulst is a good example,” she explains. “He has his own very Flemish idiom, but that’s accepted in the Netherlands, where he has even won literary prizes.” Tom Lanoye and Hugo Claus are other examples.

So is the purpose of her first novel, which she will discuss this month at the Antwerp book festival Het andere boek (see story here), to escape the limits of translation and take advantage of this freedom that writers enjoy? “I’ve been writing since I was little,” she says. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do”.

Puinvrouw in Berlijn (Rubble Woman in Berlin) is the story of a Flemish journalist living in Berlin, who falls in love with the mysterious Gregor. He shows her the many sides of the city. “Berlin is a character in the story,” she says. “I went there first as a student, and go back regularly. I wanted to show the different facets of the city, as a metaphor for the different facets of the characters. Free will is a theme of the book, and so is language. The two main characters have to try to find a common language in which they can speak to each other.”

Free will figures heavily in Keteleer’s other position: chair of the Writers in Prison committee of Flemish PEN. It’s the local branch of International PEN, the world’s oldest human rights organisation. It works for writers everywhere, protecting freedom of expression and defending those who are harassed, imprisoned and sometimes killed for their essays, articles or prose.

The committee organises actions on behalf of writers in prison worldwide: writing letters to the writers themselves, and writing to the authorities of the countries concerned. In both cases, the important message is that the world is watching and waiting. One writer imprisoned in Mali, for example, was not being allowed any mail, until he finally received a postcard with just the message “Groetjes van Amsterdam” (Greetings from Amsterdam). That was enough, he later said, for him to realise there were people out there supporting him.

“It can be a bit frustrating because you don’t always know what the effect is,” Keteleer says. “But we get reports that the writers concerned receive better treatment in prison because of the international attention. That’s something.”

PEN has published a list of cases since about 2004, which includes a fair amount of good news. But it also includes a number of cases of threats to freedom of speech in Europe.

As might be expected, the document is full of cases from Turkey, China, countries of the former Soviet Union, Central Asian republics and South America. But there are also cases from Spain, Hungary, Italy and France. In the latter case, the publishing director of Lyon Magazine, Philippe Brunet-Lecomte, was indicted on charges of “defending a criminal act” after publishing an interview with an imam who advocated the stoning of women for adultery.

“Freedom of speech can always be threatened, even here,” says Keteleer. “Recently at a meeting of the Human Rights Council [of the United Nations] in Geneva there was discussion about making insults to religion an exception to the right to free speech.” A great many writers are already being victimised for insults to religion, among them Jerzy Urban, fined in Poland in 2005 for insulting the Pope.

There’ll be an opportunity to find out more on 15 November, which is the International Day of the Imprisoned Writer. Flemish PEN will be running a programme of events in cooperation with Bozar. Keteleer, meanwhile, is busy on a collection of short stories and her third volume of poetry.

Photo © Norbert Maes

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