The original idea was sparked by my visits to a hairdresser about 15 years ago. I had never enjoyed visiting traditional modern hairdressers – embarrassment, irritation with the level of meaningless talk – and when I found that the husband of one of my colleagues was a retired hairdresser and served a few clients at his house, I was immediately interested. What I hadn’t anticipated was the level of discussion we had! Mr. G. was an eccentric, flamboyant, Jewish man who enjoyed getting into every subject possible. We had the most fascinating conversations. I couldn’t help thinking that it would have been ideal if people from all faiths and background could have joined in the discussions with us. He was forthright and dramatic in his views but, however much we disagreed, neither of us ever took offence. He told me that he had learnt more about religion from me than he had in discussions with his local rabbi, where he had to be careful about the views he expressed.
I was an English teacher at a secondary school, and I soon realised how easy it was to become disillusioned with my profession. There was a huge range of backgrounds and beliefs in my school, and I loved the craziness of what went on there. When you start out as a young teacher, you are often idealistic, but that can quickly change so that you become tired and jaded. I began to hate ‘teacher-speak’ and political correctness and the constant concern with ‘success’ in examination results. However, underneath all the weariness, I found that I did care about what happened to my pupils, and English Literature was an excellent medium for sharing of ideas. Teenagers always seemed free to say exactly what they thought in my lessons, and I encouraged that. I was also the mother of four teenage children and the co-leader of a local youth group, and I never tired of listening to the ideas of these teenagers, even when they sent me crazy! My children were outspoken about their views at home, and my husband and I never tried to stop them saying what they thought. Laughter was always around the corner in our house! A visitor from Africa told us that we should have warned him before he came, so he could have taken out an insurance for cracked ribs!
Although none of my own children attempted to take their own life at university (thankfully), one of them had a very serious breakdown while she was still at home, and I learnt a lot about the treatment on offer for young people from the Mental Health services. She was saved by her siblings who supported her brilliantly, teasing her, trying to make her laugh and offering a shoulder to cry on. I also heard about some of the problems faced by my children’s friends when they were away from home at university and sadly there have been several cases of suicide at British Universities. Many of the conversations in the book are ones I have had with young people.
When I changed my job from being a teacher to being a chaplain – I became ordained in the Anglican church to do this – I experienced inter-faith events and was invited to go to religious services in other places of worship. I also saw at first hand, when I was a governor, how voluntary aided Church schools – primary and secondary – had to cope with objections and prejudices from parents of different backgrounds. It soon became obvious how difficult it was to experience real understanding and tolerance in our society. All the episodes in the book are written from real life experience though sometimes the context has been changed. I took the call when an elderly relative had suddenly died and I thought it was the death of my daughter with depression. I experienced the pupil from a religious family showing off how she had been fed sausages at a party, and I had to cope with the mother’s criticisms. Parents’ evenings and the way different cultures responded to them were all part of my professional experience. The bizarre conversations at inter-faith events were all based on real life events.
I wrote down many of these episodes in my notebooks over the years. I had no idea how they could be connected until the time of the pandemic when I saw how lockdowns and changing rules within England gave a perfect way of linking hairdressing socials, interfaith events, experiences at school, the joys and frustrations of dealing with teenagers, the mental health challenges for young people and the potential for abuse and the class system which is still such a part of British life. By that time, I had become extremely fond of Mia and her family, Aisha and Johnnie, Hadassah and Soraya, and all the staff and pupils at Mia’s school. The book does touch on serious subjects, especially how we manage tolerance in our society, but I wanted to do it with a light touch so that enjoyment of the characters was the key experience. I hope the reader enjoys them as much as the author has done!
The first thing that seduced me in this book was the tone: As an unconditional admirer of Agatha Christie and British humour, I felt that same spirit as of the first paragraph, and immediately loved the smile that came to my face. And I knew it was the type of smile I’d want to share with Eukalypto readers.
The second feel I enjoyed is the freedom of speech, the anti-politically-correct approach, the will to express clearly each and every thought that comes to one’s mind, yet with all the adequate, and British, politeness, respect, and restraint. Since most of the dialogues take place in a salon, there is naturally a certain distance between the protagonists, yet even in family scenes, Anne-Louise knows exactly how to measure each word in order to say everything without hurting anyone. Jumping from one topic to another, the whole book, though underpinned by a rigorous storytelling structure, resembles a giant salon conversation; this mise en abyme was also something I was, in advance, thrilled to share with our readers.
The most important facet of that book, though, is its message of hope and its invitation to interfaith-dialogue. Everywhere in the world, cultural and religious clashes are occurring at a terrifying rate; a frank and sincere dialogue is mandatory to bridge the gaps between communities. An outstanding observant of behaviours and temperaments, Anne-Louise shows an amazingly deep and equal understanding of the different religions and cultures depicted here, making this novel a must-read for anyone interested in interfaith dialogue.
“The Hairdresser of Finchley Road” is an invitation to communicate and share, in the most natural and sincere manners, and, though it is told by an atheist narrator, it is also a prayer for peace.
TRANSLATORS’ NOTE:
For the French version, apart from the usual challenges such as organisation names and administrative terms, one of the most difficult tasks was to find simple equivalents for the grades and class names, as well as the titles of members of the educational administration, since they are not quite the same on each side of the English Channel.
As we usually do, we kept as is what was clear and obvious to any reader from around the world (such as the grades: A, B+, etc.), we tried to find equivalents where possible (class names and some of the titles), and when that was impossible (some titles with no French equivalent, for example), we added a brief, in-context explanatory sentence. This last approach was used for all typical English elements that were impossible to translate. For example, for the well-known British acronym NHS, we simply “expanded” it by writing out the full words in the French version: Service National de Santé (which is not the same appellation as the French equivalent but is clear enough), then abbreviated it to SNS after the first couple of occurrences. We did the same for the Church of England (Église d'Angleterre).
Aside from the context-related translation challenges, we also had to address the term “gender assignment,” whose French equivalent, “réattribution de genre,” is significantly less commonly used: 11,900,000 online occurrences versus 1,960. We couldn’t replace it with the more widely used French term “changement de sexe,” which is much more common and socially accepted – more so than its English literal translation, “change of sex” – because the dialogue specifically highlights the fact that one term is more politically correct than the other. This holds true in French too, but to a lesser extent, which could give the reader the impression that Mia is slightly more politically correct than she actually is. However, it was impossible to remove that part of the dialogue, so we relied on the rest of the book to balance this and demonstrate that Mia doesn’t strictly adhere to political correctness.
Regarding the word “woke,” which doesn’t really have a French equivalent and is often used as is, we kept it in English. For readers who might not understand it, we added a natural explanation with its closest literal translation, “éveillé,” in quotation marks, right before it in the sentence.
We also had to navigate the usual distinction between capitalising the first letter of “juif” (Jew) in French: “Juif” (capital J) refers to the Jewish people as a group, while “juif” refers to members of the religion, so we had to be careful about its use in different contexts and consulted the author in ambiguous cases.
Another translation choice we made was to use existing French words or expressions as much as possible, even if they are less common. For instance, we preferred “Janvier sans alcool” to “Dryanuary,” because while younger French audiences might be familiar with “Dryanuary,” older generations might not, whereas everyone would understand “Janvier sans alcool,” even if it is less widely used.
Conveying the British humour, which is a prominent feature of the original text, was also a major challenge. We faced the typical dilemmas encountered by translators in such cases. One of these is the structure of the sentences: in humour, the positioning of each word is crucial to building the punchline and maximising the comedic effect, but grammar doesn’t work the same in both languages, and words often have to be repositioned. As a result, several jokes are lost in translation and need to be “fixed” or reformulated to recreate the same effect, along with the same British subtlety. We hope we did it justice.
On another note, we made the unconventional choice to mix English and French quotation marks (using French marks for dialogues and English ones for quotations within the body text), in keeping with Eukalypto's experimental approach, while also giving francophone readers an added English touch.
Finally, some elements were impossible to translate or explain for francophone readers (such as OFSTED, SOAS, TUC, NUS, Waitrose, and Aldi), so we kept them as is. As per our default policy of not using footnotes, we relied on the context to clarify them or, if necessary, on each reader’s initiative to research any potentially unclear points.
ABOUT THE COVER:
As soon as he read it for the first time, the Chief Editor of the book came up with the idea for the cover. He personally gathered the various elements (a woman’s surprised face, scissors, and religious symbols), adapted what needed to be adjusted (such as aging the woman using FaceApp), and created a basic layout.
The graphic designer then stepped in to give it consistency and the strong visual identity seen in the final result.