Category Archives: germany

The German version of The Name of the Wind is coming out soon. Check out the cover.

Though it happened a while back, this German deal was kind of a big deal. The publisher that’s handling it in Germany doesn’t do much fantasy, just a very few authors like Tolkien and Tad Williams. So the fact that they bought my book gave me some much-needed respectability that helped us make some other foreign sales. It also was nice knowing that they take their stuff very seriously, and would do a good job with the translation and publication of the book.

German is the only language other than English that I know anything about. But honestly, I can’t claim to be anything other than illiterate in my second language. I can remember a few phrases, like, “Gleich um die Ecce,” “Wennigsten functionieren die wasserliedung!” and “Ich habe zu vielen affen spielen im meinem obenboden.”

Other than that, I have a bunch of nouns and verbs rattling around in my head, but my ability to string them together grammatically is really non-existent. Combined with my horrible spelling, I’m guessing that what I’ve written up above is barely German at all. And more like that language twins use to speak to each other.

My German non-literacy was really driven home to me when I read the title and thought, “Des. Des…. does that indicate the nominative case?” Then I realized I couldn’t even remember what the nominative case was. In fact, I’m pretty iffy as to what a case is at all, nominative or otherwise. This pretty much shatters any hope I had of ever reading my own book in another language.

It was a nice thought while it lasted.

Later all,

pat