From the GIAP newsletter:

Nope, they sure don't like us!
A few notes on the differences between European and American reviews of Q and 54,
appended with the Washington Post and the AV Club reviews of 54

Qed. Business as usual. The Washington Post says that 54 is a disaster and our novels suck anyway. The AV Club says we badly need an editor :-) Both reviewers seem to think that our novels are nothing other than self-parodies, impassionate postmodernist jokes, tongue-in-cheek intellectual divertissements. In the US we are rarely described as "writers" or "novelists": they usually call us "intellectuals".
That's the same way The Washington Post had welcomed Q, ie as the umpteenth example of a postmodernist anti-novel.

We are perfectly aware that, once it's been written, a text does not belong to its author(s) anymore. However, we can't help but comparing European and American reviews of both Q and 54. Believe us, it's a fascinating thing to do.

Most Europeans reviewers (including some who didn't like the books) tend to think that we've made efforts to tell epic tales of social conflict and make statements about the value of folk/popular culture for everyday resistance to power. They tend to think that our novels are passionate, not cold. They're able to grasp the social and historical background, and think that our books are sincere (albeit critical) tributes to our forefathers and foremothers, ie to the lower classes of our continent. That's what readers have found in both books, and it's also the way we feel about our work. Of course there's irony, and sarcastic passages. Certainly not everything is to be taken at face value, but the tone is generally warm and there's passion. We tried to put our feelings, our fondnesses and even our family traditions into the job. And our family traditions are mostly about class war... which has long become a repressed subject in the US public discourse.

On the contrary, the majority of American reviewers find our books bleak and 100% ironic, overburdened with postmodernism and intellectual posturing. In a way, they are persuaded that we despise our readers and want to take the piss out of them ("Q has enjoyed bestseller status throughout Europe. I can only wonder if the authors are laughing"). This will sound bizarre to those who know how far we go out of our way to keep the dialogue alive in our community, through hundreds of meetings, open projects, and literary jam-sessions on the web.
Another curious thing: whereas in Italy and Europe our books are popular best-sellers, most American reviewers tend to find them very high-brow and difficult to read.

What the hell is going on here? Are those books printed on litmus paper? Do they tell us something important on the cultural differences between the two worlds? Is the Atlantic Ocean broadening farther on?
Once again: don't get us wrong. We are not complaining that American critics don't like us. This isn't about the quality of our writing: it's about the difference between the European and American perception of the nature of our books. We are intrigued by that difference, and wonder about the causes. And we're talking only about critics and professional reviewers. We don't have enough feedback from US readers to tell something meaningful about their perception of our work.
Is there some freakonomic rationale for this situation? What do y'all think? Can you give us a hint, a hand, an explanation?

Maybe it isn't that American critics don't like us: maybe they can't like us. Maybe our books are too "provincial", crammed as they are with references to an Italian and pan-European background. Those references are easily understood in Latin America, because those peoples share many features with us, but they're missed completely in the US. Maybe. This is just a conjecture.

Anyway: with this kind of welcome, there seems to be no chance for us on the American book marketplace. We already knew that, and we expected nothing different. Pre-reviews were good (albeit some of them were slightly out of focus), but reviews are quite another thing. We already know that the novel we're writing right now, Manitouana, will be mercilessly torn apart in the US (granted that it's published at all). It's a tragic novel of anabasis and exodus, set in the 1770's on both shores of the Atlantic. It's the first episode of a triptych on the whereabouts of the American revolution... They're gonna hate our guts more than ever.
Never mind, we'll stick to Europe, the Commonwealth and Latin America :-)

You can read the abovementioned reviews here:
http://www.wumingfoundation.com/itali... ( )

An excellent adventure interweaving fact and fiction. Really works, albeit with a bit of farce thrown in for good measure. It is an apt follow-on from the writing team's first book, "Q" ( )

That’s ‘54’ as in 1954, not the NY nightclub, and the name “Wu Ming� allegedly means “no name� in Mandarin. In fact, “Wu Ming� isn’t a Chinese writer at all, but a collective of four or five writers in Italy. It’s pretty fascinating – you’ve got the Cold War, Lucky Luciano, Italian postwar Commies, the KGB, Cary Grant on a mission for MI6, and a brilliantly named McGuffin Electric television set. Rich detail, thoroughly engrossing, and definitely not recommended for anyone not prepared to see Commies portrayed as actual human beings. Gets a big murky at the end, but it was well worth the trip. ( )

www.wumingfoundation.com ( )