“Then there is a veritable panorama of the immediate post-’68 emigration process itself: from the border crossings that, again, resemble neither the dangerous escapes of previous eras nor those that ...
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Literary roundup: Maria Stepanova, Baltic lit in translation and Colum McCann/John Berger
Short notice on this one but at 6pm CET (12 noon EST) ...
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Literary roundup: the wolves of Krasznahorkai, Fabula and a translation tale
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 […]
Book launch: Ferenc Barnás/The Parasite
On May 27, an online book launch will be held from the Hungarian Cultural Centres London and New York for the English translation of The Parasite by Hungarian writer Ferenc Barnás. The event will consist of a discussion between the author and the book’s translator Paul Olchváry, moderated by journalist, author and literary critic Nicholas […]
Mitja Cander in B O D Y
The latest fiction offering in B O D Y’s Spring Issue comes from the debut novel of Slovene writer Mitja Čander, Blind Man, translated by Rawley Grau. Čander is no stranger to the literary world, having been a longtime figure as an editor, publisher, playwright, screenwriter and critic as well as candidate for national chess […]
European Review of Books
A new magazine is being launched called the European Review of Books, which will be about books and more in English as well as a variety of European languages. They are holding a crowdfunding campaign to support the debut issue. So far they have something of a mission statement among other texts on their website […]
Literary roundup: Leo Perutz, spaceman and love
There is an excellent essay entitled “The Forgotten Genius of Leo Perutz” in the LARB by Daniel Polansky on the Prague-born Austrian writer Leo Perutz. He gives a survey of Perutz’s novels and unique sensibility and mix of genres with complicated exploration of issues of identity and nationalism among many other subjects. Add to this […]
B O D Y: The Spring Issue
The Spring Issue of B O D Y kicks off today with some poetry. I’ll have some fiction from Russia by Andrey Filimonov translated by Richard Coombes and Anne O. Fisher followed by a discussion the two translators had with Filimonov about his work, his influences, growing up in Siberia, Slavic word games and where […]
Carlos Busqued (1970-2021)
Argentine writer Carlos Busqued died on March 29, 2021 at the age of 50. His second novel Magnetized was published in English translation last year, having followed the translation of his debut Under This Terrible Sun in 2013. I reviewed both of the books in B O D Y and we published an excerpt of […]
Witches Sabbath | Review
Witches Sabbath By Maurice Sachs Translated from the French by Richard Howard 2020, Spurl Editions, 276 pp. Maurice Sachs was born in Paris in 1906, when the Belle Époque was giving way to modernity, and grew up nourished by that golden age of French culture in a way that seems unimaginable today. His grandfather was […]
Top 100 Books
The Calvert Journal has compiled a list of 100 books to read from Eastern Europe (also Central Europe) and Central Asia. It’s a fascinating list put together by a wide range of writers, translators, academics coming from a number of different countries and languages besides English. The list includes a number of books and writers […]
The Flight of Icarus
“How far do you have to go to be free of the threat of imprisonment? Up in the air, the idea of confinement suddenly became nonsensical. There were no walls, nothing solid to keep you still. On the earth though, there were borders and barracks and armed guards…” From my short story “The Flight of […]
