Tim Mohr on stage at the Festival Neue Literatur, New York City, 2019. Image: FNL
By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox
Michael Reynolds: ‘Voices From Outside the Mainstream’
On onday (March 31), the translator and author Tim Mohr passed away at his home in Brooklyn, New York, at the age of 55, reportedly from pancreatic cancer.
Mohr was the author of the nonfiction book Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, and Revolution: Fall of the Berlin Wall, which Rolling Stone named one of the “Best Books of Year.”
He was also the co-writer for the memoirs of Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan; KISS frontman Paul Stanley; and helped complete the memoir of musician Gil Scott-Heron.
In the international publishing world, Mohr is known as an admired German-to-English translator who championed the work of women and lesser-known writers.
As Michael Reynolds, executive publisher of Europa Editions, has written about Mohr in a memorial article, “When Tim began working as a literary translator it seemed to him (and to many of us) that the world of literature in translation had a laddish patina to it, that it was dominated by white guys translating well-established white guys.
“Tim took issue with that and was determined to establish his reputation as a translator of female voices, and, at the same time, of voices from outside the mainstream.”
Translations
Seven of Alina Bronsky’s novels were translated by Mohr for Europa.
He also translated Wetlands and Wrecked by Charlotte Roche for Grove; Tiger Milk by Stefanie de Velasco; The Second Rider by Alex Beer; Sand by Wolfgang Herrndorf, which was shortlisted for the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize; and Guantanamo by Dorothea Dieckmann, the inaugural winner of the Best Translated Book Award in 2008.
Before becoming an author and translator, Mohr was a DJ in Berlin in the 1990s. This influenced Burning Down the Haus, after which he turned to journalism. In he United States, he worked for Details, New York, New York Review of Books, and Playboy. It wasn’t until 2004 when Mohr was on assignment for Playboy in Aspen, Colorado meeting with Hunter S. Thompson about his Gonzo guide to life series that Mohr really began his life as a translator, a story Mohr wrote about in Literary Hub. “As I continued to translate, I found my life enriched in ways I wouldn’t have anticipated,” wrote Mohr.
Riky Stock, business development in the States for Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 15 to 19), met Mohr in the year 2000 and worked with Mohr on New Books in German, the Wolff Prize, the New York-based Festival Neue Literatur, and, most recently, in the Frankfurt International Translators program in 2023.
Stock says, “Tim was an amazing translator, a great ambassador of German literature, and a wonderful person. He was generous, funny, and caring. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him in Frankfurt in 2023 and I’m so thankful for the event he helped me put together. It was just him and me on stage and he had so much to say. He managed to fill a one-hour slot and I think it was a great event.”
Stock shares a note that Mohr sent last fall, referring to their time together in Frankfurt in 2023, “The fair seems like a magical dream at this point,” he wrote, “such a fun week of expanding horizons, new and old friends, even dancing. Really miss all of that. Though it also offered a sense of sustenance and hope—I guess I don’t have to tell you this, as you know it well, but feeling part of a sort of global network is a wonderful sensation, especially when times are tough.”
More from publishing perspectives on translation and translators is here, more on Europa Editions is here, more on Festival Neue Literatur is here, and more obituaries are here.
