Jacques Testard is transforming our reading habits, one blue book at a time
At the age of 29, Jacques Testard set up a publishing house because no one in publishing would employ him. Born in France and schooled in London, he had wanted to go into academia before a series of internships made him realise that publishing was “another way to be serious about books”. In 2014, when he struggled to find a permanent opening, he decided to launch his own house. His ambition was not just to be an editor but to find and publish “writers at the cutting edge of contemporary literature” – including, significantly, work in translation. He had 18 months until the money ran out. “I thought, ‘I’ll give this a go and see what happens, and maybe in a few years’ time someone will give me a job.’”
Every publisher is a story, says Ray O’Meara, the house’s art director, and the story of Fitzcarraldo Editions is very simple. Twelve years ago, mainstream UK publishers did not believe there was a market for translated literature. It was a gap Testard was able to plug. The first book he published that year was Zone by Mathias Énard, a 521-page stream-of-consciousness account of an amphetamine–fuelled journey across Italy, written in a single sentence, which he had discovered when he read it in French. For the new house, it was something of a mission statement. That same year, still the sole employee, Testard made an offer for Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history Second-hand Time. The book was already a bestseller in Russia and had sold well in France and Germany but there was no competition for the UK rights. Testard’s opening bid of £2,000 was rejected; he upped it a little and it was accepted. The following year Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in Literature and there was an eight-way auction for the US rights.
Today, Fitzcarraldo Editions has become a hallmark for a generation. Its signature International Klein Blue and clean cream titles include Nobel- and Pulitzer-prize winners, with authors ranging from French memoirist Annie Ernaux to New York-based war reporter Jon Lee Anderson and Hong Kong novelist Dorothy Tse. It specialises in contemporary literary fiction and long-form essays, seeking out work that is determinedly “innovative, imaginative, ambitious”, broadly kept at a 50-50 split between English language and literature in translation. Cult hits include Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, an interrogation of millennial life; The Plague, essays on death and humanity by PEN Pinter-award-winner Jacqueline Rose; and this year’s Your Presence is a Danger to Your Life: Voices From Gaza by Samar Yazbek. A poetry list launched last year: this May, American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney won the Dylan Thomas Prize for her debut collection Joy Is My Middle Name, while Makenna Goodman’s novel Helen of Nowhere is currently longlisted for the Booker Prize.
It’s an extraordinary outcome for a house that started out with a single employee, 18 months’ funding, and the modest aim of publishing six books a year. “I feel fortunate to have started a press when I did,” says Testard with understatement when we meet in Fitzcarraldo’s offices in a former factory in Peckham Rye, south-east London. “I guess I turned up at the right time.”
“Fitzcarraldo is forging ahead on its own path and terms,” says Harriet Moore, literary agent at Alexander Aitken. “They have a robust commitment to the long view, a confidence in their own sensibility and vision, and their books will last. It offers a place where writers can think seriously and strangely, work against the expected, follow their obsessions, play.”
“Jacques is concerned about quality, not quantity,” says Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who won the Nobel Prize in 2023; Fitzcarraldo had published Septology, a seven-part novel in a single sentence, the previous year. “He has trusted me.” Fosse had won numerous international awards, but his prose was not published in the UK until Fitzcarraldo released Scenes from a Childhood in 2018.
“Jacques is an attentive editor who gives excellent advice and is deeply respectful of authors,” says Ernaux. The Years had been published to acclaim in France in 2008 but it was not until 2018 that Fitzcarraldo published the translation to a rapturous reception, credited as contributing towards Ernaux’s 2022 Nobel win. (Testard had argued the case to nominate it for the International Booker despite it being hybrid-memoir rather than fiction; it was shortlisted.)
It now seems absurd that Ernaux, Fosse and Alexievich (as well as Nobel-winner Olga Tokarczuk, whose Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a Fitzcarraldo bestseller) had not been published in the UK sooner. Testard shrugs when this is put to him, pointing out that when Fitzcarraldo launched there was still a tendency in bookshops to shelve international literature in its own category, “almost labelling it as a separate genre”. He attributes this partly to a British Empire legacy; that with the Commonwealth there’s “a sense that you’re [already] bringing writers in from the peripheries”. There is also the commercial aspect – “this notion that translation is more expensive, and you’ll never be able to recoup the money”. But there is also the question of discovering it in the first place. Testard grew up reading “indiscriminately” in English and French, and he also reads Spanish. “There are very, very few editors in UK publishing who read in other languages,” he says. “In Spain or France or Germany you have to have three or four languages to be in the editorial positions we are in.”
Testard, 41, possesses the extreme courtesy often typical of his generation, underscored by a certain steel. Wearing a collarless blue shirt and dark trousers, he talks fluently and rapidly about how his frustrations with the anglophone publishing industry brought him where he is today. The open-plan space, now housing 11 employees, is all white walls and deep-blue accents, light pouring in from the Crittall-style windows. On an exposed brick wall at one end of the room, trademark blue-and-white spines are lined up in rows, while in the small, bare meeting room, coloured Post-Its stuck on a wall denote the year’s publishing schedule: non-fiction, fiction, poetry, classics. Outside, over the railway line, sits Bold Tendencies, the multistorey car park turned cultural hub where Fitzcarraldo holds its annual party each summer.
Testard’s gravitas echoes across the house – although sometimes this effect seems almost accidental. “Can we do that?”, O’Meara recalls wondering when Testard first suggested taking the name Fitzcarraldo from Werner Herzog’s 1982 film about an opera-loving fanatic rampaging around the Peruvian jungle. Tamara Sampey-Jawad, associate publisher, was taken aback when she arrived in 2016 as part-time publishing assistant, and Testard announced to her cheerfully: “It’s just me!” Clare Bogen, publicity director, says that before she joined, she had an image of Fitzcarraldo being “like, 20 posh men wearing suits to work”.
This perception is indisputably linked to the house style. Back in 2011, Testard co-founded a literary journal in order to publish the new fiction and essays in which he was most interested. The White Review aimed to create a platform for innovative work that might not otherwise find a place at the table – including work in translation (“for me, it was a given”, he says). The art director was O’Meara. When he subsequently built the design for Fitzcarraldo, he knew he wanted a visual identity that would bring a sense of clarity and coherence; “a still point within the commerce”, as he puts it. There would be no images or endorsement quotes on the front of the books; simply identifying colours – blue for fiction, cream for non-fiction – and a blind stamp colophon of a bell in a circle, a nod to the speech from the bell tower in the film Fitzcarraldo, a scene that struck O’Meara for its “will and value”. The decision to use French-flapped B-format covers on uncoated card was partly pragmatic (“we just didn’t have the money for hardbacks”) but it also recalls the singular aesthetic of fabled European publishing houses such as Éditions Gallimard and Adelphi Edizioni.
Sales reps immediately told them it was too extreme. “I had a wobble,” says Testard. “And Ray said, ‘Let’s keep that in mind’ – and also probably something along the lines of: ‘never listen to salespeople’.” But the booksellers liked the books, and they liked the design. “And then they did what Ray hoped might happen, which was to put the books together in displays – create spaces for Fitzcarraldo.”
In June 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU, with 64 per cent of over-65s in favour of leaving. This year, a poll of Gen Z likely to vote in a second referendum showed 71 per cent would vote to rejoin. During that decade, literature in translation experienced an extraordinary uplift in the UK. In 2025, sales of translated fiction were up more than 30 per cent from 2016, according to a survey by NielsenIQ BookData. And its readers are younger, with the largest share bought by those aged 25 to 34. “There is an incredible generational divide,” agrees Testard. “I think that it probably is a reaction to Brexit and to this inward turn in British politics and culture, and a desire to be open to the world.”
Literature has in fact become big and fashionable business in recent years: BookTok champions reading marathons; Miu Miu has a “Literary Club”; next month Dua Lipa curates the London Literature Festival. Fitzcarraldo’s own events feature an earnest, tattooed crowd, comfortable with references to Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes dropped in alongside Fleabag, the financial crisis and the problems of gentrification. Does Testard mind that their covers, tote bags and pin badges have become a shorthand for the hipster aesthetic? “I mean, if it helps, that’s fine.”
The editors at Fitzcarraldo like to compare its list to a constellation – the idea being that each text may be linked to another, with the books “kind of in conversation”, says Sampey-Jawad. One author will recommend another, or a member of staff might make a suggestion (Bogen, who grew up partly in New Zealand, argued “quite forcefully” for Janet Frame’s inclusion in the classics list). Sampey-Jawad says that frequently there’s just “a real sense of ‘this might not find another home’.” Claire-Louise Bennett’s Pond had been rejected by a number of bigger publishers who advised that the narrative should be more conventional. Published by Fitzcarraldo in 2015, it remains one of its bestsellers.
“I think mainstream publishing is quite short-sighted,” says Testard. “There are all these brilliant writers of literary fiction who are just not getting the support they were 20 or 30 years ago. We’re part of a movement of smaller indie presses who have maybe benefited from the commercial imperatives bigger presses are having to follow.”
American writer Joshua Cohen had published three novels with Penguin Random House, but in 2020 the publisher turned down his latest. Cohen’s editor had left, and the sales of his previous novel hadn’t been strong enough to automatically take on the next book. His agent submitted it to 12 or so other US publishing houses; they all passed. Testard – who had published Cohen at The White Review, and his two previous books at Fitzcarraldo – did accept the novel. When the American rights were eventually acquired by New York Review Books, The Netanyahus won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. How could a Pulitzer winner be turned down by so many publishers? “It was an odd moment,” says Testard diplomatically. Similarly, Zone had done very well in France, but before Testard, “no one was willing to take the risk”. But art is, for many writers, by definition about risk-taking. As Jonathan Buckley, whose One Boat was listed for the Booker Prize last year, says, “I’ve never written books in order to make money or make a name for myself. I just want to write the books that I feel I have to write.”
At Fitzcarraldo, “it is always about the text”, says Testard. “If we’re interested, we will discuss it in literary terms. Then the financial, commercial stuff comes later. What we do – what we set out to do – is to provide a home for writers for life. We enter into this kind of unspoken contract long-term, giving the writers permission to write whatever they want to publish, and we’ll support them through the process.” This is corroborated by the writers. “As an editor, Jacques never imposes himself on the text,” says Buckley. “It is always a conversation.” Latronico remembers his “astonishment” when Testard responded to his future ideas – “hazy, niche… with no commercial prospects whatsoever, [with] unwavering encouragement and curiosity”.
But what does this mean for growth? The average print run has risen from 1,500 copies to a minimum of 4,000; only one book has sold fewer than 1,000 copies (Testard adds with pride that in the UK the average novel sells around 300). The backlist is strong, containing five of the 10 bestsellers last year. They are expanding the audio division and aim to extend the number of languages they translate from. This year they will publish 34 books; Testard says it’s enough. Instead, the intention is what he calls – “quite morbidly” – the “final form”: a team of 12, publishing around 30 books a year. “If you tip over into too many then you start having to think about what book is going to sell 50,000 copies that year and fund the rest of the list, and make decisions for commercial reasons.” But most businesses do make decisions for commercial reasons, don’t they? “That doesn’t feel like a healthy way to go.” Are there any conditions under which he’d consider selling the company – being acquired by a bigger publisher? “No.”
Out of the 200 or so books Fitzcarraldo has published, Testard has edited, he thinks, more than half. What drives him? “Just the books,” he says apologetically. “I know, it’s kind of a lame answer. But I still feel really excited reading new work, or a new book by an author we already publish.
“I’m acutely aware that these things are cyclical,” he continues, “and probably soon we won’t be cool, and that’s fine. You know, we’ll just carry on doing what we do.”
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