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Although situated in a “remote”, north-western corner of the continent, Vagabond Voices is fervently European in its aims. Moreover, it sees no contradiction between its geographical location and its cosmopolitan vocation.

It is a fairly eclectic publisher, and its output will be predominately literary. The polemical works (Rants) will tend towards the promotion of socialist and non-violent ideals, although always in a spirit of openness and tolerance, and ideally more than one polemic could address a single subject from various viewpoints. As yet, however, no one has submitted a possible "rant", although we are hopeful that the first work will be delivered shortly.

Literary works in English are categorised as Vagabonds, and in translation they are Changelings, as translations like changelings only look like the original but are in fact subtlely different, and the process of replacement is an act of deception. So far we have only one Changeling, as translations have long lead-in times, but from now on we hope they will be coming through much more quickly. The Nocturnal Novel will be out in June, and we will be posting more detailed information about our programme in June or July.

Why Vagabond Voices? Novelists do not always resemble vagabonds literally, although many do. But like vagabonds, they are itinerant always in their minds and often geographically too. They move quickly across a landscape, recording it, examining it and often misunderstanding it, because it is not the job of the novelist to utter the final truth on anything, but rather to go in search of small truths while leaving some work for their creative partners: the readers.

Vagabond Voices is a Scottish publisher, just founded, with an up-market European brief. Good news for adventurous readers. They have scored an early coup by bringing us a short novel by Allan Massie, Surviving.  - Ronald Frame in the Scottish Review of Books.

There is, however, another reason for this name: the core activity will be the translation of European literary fiction into English, and so there is this transmigration of words from one language to another, the forced march of great multitudes of letters, the exodus of thoughts towards an inspired approximation of the original. This will make a tiny contribution to the woeful lack of translations in the English-speaking world – a kind of provincialism of the powerful. In 2006, 30% of books published in the world were in English, but only a very small proportion were in translation. In 2004, slightly more than 3% of English books were translations (2.62% in the United States). In fact, America produced only 4,982 translations, slightly ahead of the Czech Republic which produced 4,602. The record went to Italy which managed 12,197 and 22% of its total output in translation, and it therefore wins the prize for the most outward-looking country when it comes to reading.

To discover the most advanced ideas in literature, you need to know what is happening elsewhere, and however vast the English-speaking world may be, it is still thinking through the closed mechanisms of a single language.

The resources of a very small publisher like Vagabond Voices can do very little about what is also a question of attitude amongst the majority of readers, but we do feel that a perhaps very small minority of readers is being let down in these times, which are dominated by the economies of scale. Vagabond Voices will start with translations from Italian, because that is where our talents currently lie, but in the future other writers and translators will hopefully join in the enterprise.

However, Vagabond Voices will be doing much else besides, and all books will be categorised either as Vagabonds or as Rants. Please click on the menu to find out more information on either of these series (it is a little early to call them catalogues).

For Vagabond Voices, the most important thing will always be the text. Where there are extra resources, we would prefer to put them there, rather than into the cover or this website, which recall a more spartan era when words were valued more.

So far Vagabond Voices has published four titles: In Praise of the Garrulous (a book on language), Freudian Slips (the translation of a non-fiction work), Allan Massie's remarkable novel, Surviving, Allan Cameron's collection of poetry, Presbyopia, and Alessandro Barbero's The Anonymous Novel. Sensing the Future Torments. We will be publishing Ermanno Cavazzoni's novel, The Nocturnal Libraryhope in June, and have plans for Torquato Accetto's essay on mendacity, Of Honestly Dissembling in 2011. More immediately we expect very soon to confirm three English-language literary works for publication this year.