Have you ever met a wolf?
Not alive.
Dead?
Dead, yes.
Does that mean a stuffed wolf?
One stuffed, one run over, one killed.
So begins the first part of a fantastic interview with László Krasznahorkai in Hungarian Literature Online in which he talks about everything from the disappearance of high culture, historical shifts and the irretrievable cultural losses our market-driven society has experienced, and of course the role of wolves in his work and the shocking yet “indirect” story that brought him into contact with the animals.
Fabula festival
Slovenia’s largest literary festival is underway, Fabula, and will be ongoing for another couple weeks. Czech writer Marek Šindelka is in attendance and you can watch a video of the discussion held in English here. Šindelka is presenting his novel Únava materiálu (Material Fatigue), which has just been translated into Slovenian.
Other writers at the festival (who each have a book being translated into Slovene) include: Vladimir Sorokin (Day of the Oprichnik, video discussion in Russian), Deborah Levy (The Man Who Saw Everything, video interview) as well as Enis Maci, Jokha Alharthi and Claudia Durastanti.
Check out the festival’s English site here
Read my recent interview with Marek Šindelka here
Two-way translation
Frequent B O D Y contributors Julia and Peter Sherwood are interviewed by Sioned Puw Rowlands for Talking Translation with Parthian Books. They discuss working in multiple languages, translating in two different directions (e.g. from Slovak to English and from English to Slovak), their recent translation of Hana by Czech writer Alena Mornštajnová (published by Parthian), and what is the most difficult kind of literary translation, among many other interesting subjects.
They also mention some of the writers and works they’ve translated over the years: essays from the book Trees by Béla Hamvas (who’s also mentioned by Krasznahorkai in the interview above), Antal Szerb, Uršula Kovalyk, Balla and more.
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