HarperVia, the new HarperCollins imprint headed by Judith Curr, will publish 24 books a year, "mostly fiction, mostly in translation." The first seven titles will be published this fall and spring and are set in a range of places and time periods, including contemporary Venezuela and Iran, 1960s Germany and 22 years in the future. "The books all have relevance and have some point," Curr says. "They're not just about, say, a romance and will the couple end up together or about a murder and who was the killer and will the killer be found. These books have bigger issues at their heart."

Lost in the Spanish Quarter by Heddi Goodrich ($25.99, 9780008359966, September 5, 2019). Heddi met her first love while she was an American exchange student in Naples, Italy. Years later, when Pietro contacts her to apologize, Heddi is transported back to her college days in the labyrinthine streets of Naples' Spanish Quarter. This coming of age romance about an Italian boy and an American student--which Judith Curr says focuses on "nostalgia for a person's first adult romance"--is sure to appeal to fans of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels and Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. Author Heddi Goodrich, an American who studied in Naples before moving to New Zealand, originally wrote Lost in the Spanish Quarter in Italian and translated it into English herself. This is her debut novel.

It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo, translated by Elizabeth Bryer ($23.99, 9780008359911, October 17, 2019). Adelaida Falcon had a middle-class childhood in Venezuela. Now, as an adult, Adelaida must bury her mother alone because contemporary Caracas has become too dangerous for travel. Violence is rampant, food in short supply, and every night Adelaida duct tapes her windows to keep tear gas from seeping indoors. She must also endure the roving looters who call themselves revolutionaries. It Would Be Night in Caracas gives "a vivid view into Venezuela today and into a community slowly descending into chaos and total anarchy," Judith Curr says. Karina Sainz Borgo is a Venezuelan journalist who currently lives in Madrid.

The German House by Annette Hess, translated by Elisabeth Lauffer ($25.99, 9780062910257, December 3, 2019). In 1963 Germany, 24-year-old Eva Bruhns recalls World War II as a hazy memory that left Frankfurt in ruins from Allied bombing. Now the streets are repaved, new stores constructed and Eva is eager to start a fresh life with a wealthy suitor. But when Eva is hired as a translator for concentration camp victims in the 1963 Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, she learns in detail about the Holocaust and wonders why her family remains so silent about those years. Judith Curr notes that this period in Germany, a time that isn't well known, was critical because "without a reckoning with its past, Germany couldn't move forward." The German House is already a bestseller in Germany, where Annette Hess has written several popular shows for German Netflix. Her novel is sure to appeal to readers of The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa and The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris.

The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde, translated by Diane Oatley ($25.99, 9780062951366). In 2019, 70-year-old climate activist Signe sets off on a sailboat carrying cargo that may one day save lives. In 2041, Southern Europe suffers from drought and war. David and his daughter Lou are fleeing for safety when they discover Signe's old sailboat abandoned miles from shore. The End of the Ocean connects these parallel journeys into a call for climate action. Maja Lunde is a Norwegian author and screenwriter whose previous book, The History of Bees, was an international bestseller and also told a story of ecological collapse through several disparate perspectives. The End of the Ocean will appeal to Lunde's current fans and anyone concerned with climate change.

The American Fiancée by Éric Dupont, translated by Peter McCambridge ($27.99, 9780062947451, February 11, 2020). The American Fiancée is a globe-spanning saga about the Lamontagnes, whose matriarch's cookbook shapes three generations of the family's fortunes. Louis Lamontagne travels from his native Quebec to the U.S., then to Europe during World War II. Madeleine, his daughter, opens a popular restaurant chain using her grandmother's recipes. Finally, Madeleine's son Gabriel follows a woman to Berlin and uncovers shocking family secrets. Dupont weaves these far-reaching threads into what Judith Curr calls "a work of art and magic" that has already sold 60,000 copies in Quebec. The American Fiancée was a finalist for the Giller Prize, the Prix littéraire France-Québec and the Prix des cinq continents, and a winner of the Prix des libraires and the Prix littéraire des collégiens. It is Dupont's fourth novel.

Then the Fish Swallowed Him by Amir Ahmadi Arian ($25.99, 9780062946294, March 24, 2020). Yunus Turabi is an apolitical bus driver in Tehran. But after a bloody bus strike, Yunus finds himself in political prison with his own personal interrogator. As Yunus endures rounds of solitary confinement and questioning, he recalls the freer country of his youth and must decide whether to struggle against the dictatorial state or submit to its will. Then the Fish Swallowed Him is part retelling of Jonah and the Whale, part an allegory of authoritarianism and a chilling look at modern Iran. Judith Curr says that the book "shows the damage that individuals suffer under despotism." Currently a teacher in New York City, Amir Ahmadi Arian has translated the works of E.L Doctorow, Paul Auster and Cormac McCarthy from English into Farsi. Then the Fish Swallowed Him is his first novel written in English.

The Florios of Sicily by Stefania Auci, translated by Katherine Gregor ($27.99, 9780062931672, April 21, 2020). The Florios of Sicily is a grand, sweeping international bestseller that captures the many lives of one of Italy's most notorious families, the Florios, from their humble origins as Sicilian shopkeepers to their dominance as titans of industry, starting with Vincenzo, who sacrifices family and love to transform his tiny Palermo spice shop into a trading empire. The Florio men are stubborn, arrogant, philanderers and slaves to passions, while the Florio women unapologetically demand their place outside the restraints of caring mothers, alluring mistresses, or wounded wives. Inspired by the lives of real history-making titans, The Florios of Sicily brings to life the dark secrets, the loves and betrayals, and the cruel acts of revenge that marked the Florios' century of influence. In this epic yet intimate tale of power, passion, and revenge, the rise and fall of a family taps into the universal desire to become more than who we are born as.

Heddi Goodrich

Heddi Goodrich's Lost in the Spanish Quarter was just published by HarperVia. Here she discusses the book, which she first wrote and published in Italian. She calls it "a love poem" to Naples and an exploration of first love, "a kind of imprinting that affects every subsequent love relationship, a life-altering event that changes our love DNA forever."

How would you describe Lost in the Spanish Quarter?
Lost in the Spanish Quarter is a love story set in the '90s in Naples. University student Eddie, as she is known among her free-spirited tribe of fellow linguists, is an American searching for the roots she's never had, while Pietro, a geology major, is caught between a burning desire for freedom and the ties that bind him to the elusive, mountainous region he calls home, only a hundred kilometers from the city but a world away from the chaos and danger of the Spanish Quarter they live in. It's essentially a story about belonging, to a place or to a person, in which language is used a tool to peel back the emotional and cultural layers. E-mails written several years later and interlaced throughout further unravel the truth while offering the two a second chance at happiness.

How important is Naples and the Spanish Quarter as a setting for the book?
My whole reason for writing the book in the first place was simply, and selfishly, to relive Naples: I'd recently moved to New Zealand but couldn't afford the plane ticket back. The novel is my love poem to the city I lived in for over a decade, during some of my most formative years. As I began writing it, I realized that the Spanish Quarter in particular, a slum in the historic center of the city, was the perfect metaphor for first love, with its twisting paths, passionate shouting and moments of confusion and forgiveness, pettiness and heroism. Its crumbling buildings and illegal floors too, built from soft volcanic stone thanks to Mt. Vesuvius, are a daily reminder of the precariousness of all things.

Pietro's hometown, Monte San Rocco, is just as important a setting, although one I don't think American readers will be as familiar with. It's typical of many villages not just in Southern Italy but all along the country's "spinal cord," the Apennines, not postcard destinations but towns slowly dying from lack of opportunity and brain drain--when earthquakes don't depopulate them first. Unlike in Naples, where people live impulsively and loudly in the now because life is short and delicious, in Monte San Rocco much goes unsaid--even the dialect there is more closed-lipped--and food is stored up for the many winters to come, in constant preparation for the next famine. The incompatibility of these two settings is key to understanding the love story and the characters' motivations.

How easy or difficult do you think it is for a couple from different cultures to fall in love and find happiness? What's special about "first love?"
There's no easy answer to this because while it's true that we are products of the land and the culture that formed us, love is love. It just is. And even when you fall in love with someone who shares your cultural background, to love is to embark on a journey far outside your comfort zone, into unknown territory with all sorts of risks and surprises.

First love is not merely memorable but feels to me like a kind of imprinting that affects every subsequent love relationship, a life-altering event that changes our love DNA forever.

How was it writing in Italian first and translating into English? Was writing the book first in Italian important to the story? Do the Italian and English versions differ in any ways?
My first few drafts were actually in English. I'm an English teacher after all, and a copyeditor too: that is, I'm a very competent writer in my native language. But, as it turns out, I'm not a very inspired writer. Two years ago I discovered that only in Italian do I get true inspiration, in the classic sense of the word where beautiful sentences will come to me, as if from outside myself, and I just write them down. Maybe this inspiration is simply an effect of the slight distance from the language that I have as a non-native speaker, that subtle extraneousness that allows me to hear my words as if they weren't mine and therefore pick up any false notes, such as affected, overdramatic or unnecessary phrases. In Italian, I write like a reader. At the same time, I feel a very personal connection with the language, like it naturally molds to my innermost thoughts and emotions, but without all the linguistic baggage a native speaker might have. I can be true to myself and unintentionally unconventional. It's very freeing.

Translating Perduti nei Quartieri Spagnoli (Giunti, January 2019) into English wasn't quite as magical but it turned out to be a fun intellectual challenge, and it was nice never having to ask the author what she meant. Once I'd finished the translation, I was satisfied that I'd conveyed the genuineness of the original but worried that something essential had been inevitably lost, like with a photocopy of a painting. But I think I just needed some space from Perduti in order to see Lost in the Spanish Quarter as a work of fiction in its own right. Besides, the English version has some small additions, relating to the dialect or other cultural or historical factors, which I love because they will deepen the experience for the English-language reader.

How was BookExpo and your tour in Washington, D.C., and Boston? What stores did you visit and what stood out about them and the booksellers?
At BookExpo, I received an embarrassingly warm welcome. There was a long line at the HarperCollins stand to receive signed galley copies of my novel, although it might have had something to do with the free prosecco brought out to launch the new imprint, HarperVia. My editors and the rest of the team were giddy with excitement because they're doing something risky and new--and it's a real thrill because I'm new to all this too. I took part in a panel discussion about literature in translation and was shocked to learn that only 3% of books sold in America are translated from a foreign language. I like to fantasize that my novel will help, in its own little way, to make the world smaller.

Visiting so many tantalizing independent bookstores confirmed to me that I've landed among some of the most passionate do-gooders on the planet. In D.C., I especially enjoyed walking into Politics and Prose, just a block away from where I'd been staying with my brother and his family; it's their local bookstore, right next door to their local pizzeria. I also met with booksellers at Kramerbooks, One More Page, East City, Solid State, Loyalty Books and Busboys and Poets. In and around Boston, if possible, the reception was even warmer and I simply did not want to leave. I visited Harvard Book Store, Belmont Books, Harvard Coop, Newtonville Books, Concord Bookshop, Brookline Booksmith, Porter Square Books, An Unlikely Story and Wellesley Books.

What brought you to New Zealand? Will you be back in the U.S. anytime soon?
To quote Eddie Vedder, by going to the other hemisphere "I got my wish to up and disappear," but New Zealand is the kind of land that heals you whether you like it or not. That was 20 years ago, which means I've lived here longer than in any other country. But now my connection with the U.S. has been rekindled, in a completely unexpected way, as has my relationship with Italy, so who knows what will happen next.

Do you have plans to write more fiction and will you set any future works in New Zealand or the U.S.?
I'm naturally drawn to Southern Italy, and the next novel I plan to write is set in the province of Naples, near Pompeii, dealing with the friendship between two women from different worlds and different generations. Setting is fundamental to me and always will be, but I'm also fascinated by ancient Roman history and keep getting flashes of a possible historical novel. And yes, New Zealand, with its flightless birds and their strange songs, its wet beauty and fierce culture, provides an incredible backdrop which I probably won't be able to resist.