AT A recent literary event aboard a barge on the River Thames in London, Pia Juul, one of Denmark's leading poets and writers, conversed with Ali Smith, a British novelist. Ms Juul's voice was nearly drowned out by nearby diners and music playing upstairs. The symbolism was apt. The event's sponsor, Peirene Press, has just published Ms Juul's prize-winning “The Murder of Halland” in English translation. But as with Ms Juul's performance on the barge, it seems nearly all of the best foreign voices go unheard in Britain and America.

When it comes to international literature, English readers are the worst-served in the Western world. Only 3% of the books published annually in America and Britain are translated from another language; fiction's slice is less than 1%. This contrasts sharply with continental Europe: in France, 14% of books sold in 2008 were translations; in Germany, the figure was 8%, according to Literature Across Frontiers, a translation advocacy network. Yet the bias for English literature appears to be universal: two in three European translations are from English, and about 40% of all novels published in France.

The Illinois-based Dalkey Archive Press, which has been publishing international literature in English for 25 years, says the lack of literature in translation is a cultural crisis that is growing worse. Faced with such a homogeneous reading culture in her adopted Britain, Meike Ziervogel, a German native, started Peirene Press in 2008 in her north London home. She joins a handful of publishing pioneers such as New York's Europa Editions and Rochester University's Open Letter, which are working to chip away at the navel-gazing literary culture of Anglo-American letters. She publishes three novellas (each shorter than 200 pages) a year in English by celebrated European authors who are barely known outside their home countries.

The beautifully designed books have been praised as much for their existence as for the European flavour of the prose (ie, non-formulaic and a bit dark). As these spare novellas often deal with difficult situations, such as mental illness, infanticide and violence, Ms Ziervogel admits that they are not “an easy sell.” But this distinction from the plot-driven stories of Anglo-American literature makes these voices vital, she adds.