It’s spring, it’s the London Book Fair, when international publishers pour into Earls Court, and we’re launching a new section of the website where we can talk about books from around the globe, whether they are written originally in English or translated from another language.

There are two major, and often conflicting, strands to my job. Finding books to publish and working with authors to make books as good as they can be. I want to use this blog to talk about both the ‘finding’ and the ‘editing’. How, out of the myriad books published around the world, in hundreds of different languages, do we decide what makes it on to the shelf (virtual or otherwise) of a UK bookshop? And how do we work with authors (and translators) to make the best possible books?

Both these areas can often be controversial, and I hope this blog will become a place where people can hear more about the challenges we editors face, the approaches we take, and contribute their views on all of this, as well as which ‘foreign’ books should be published in the UK. So here’s a starting point for discussion.

Our featured book for April is The Road to Wanting, Wendy Law-yone’s beautiful, powerful novel about a Burmese woman’s search to find her place in the world. This is a novel that immerses you in the sights and smells of Asia – primitive Burmese hill villages, dusty, bustling Chinese frontier towns, and the neon lights of Bangkok. But, in a very subtle way, it is also about the cultural influences and misunderstandings between East and West, and how a young woman is caught between the two …