Here’s what I wrote about the Prague book fair for Publishing Perspectives, covering the significance of Slovakia as the Guest of Honor, poetry being a focus of the fair and various ups and downs facing the Czech book industry, such as the insanely high VAT tax on books and the impending arrival of Amazon. On […]
The short story “All of That” by Ognjen Spahić was featured in B O D Y’s Sunday European Fiction’s on June 30. It was also the basis for a short film by Montenegrin director Branislav Milatović that has appeared in film festivals throughout Europe, recently winning the Gjorgi Abadziev Award at Macedonia’s Asterfest international short […]
“He’ll carry the wreath, and Maria and Anna will walk after him. He said it as if he didn’t have any idea what he was supposed to do. Like he’s going to carry the wreath on his back and walk around the house. Cruel. It seems cruel to bother children with that kind of stupidity; […]
A new column at Literalab that will follow-up B O D Y’s Sunday European Fiction starts off with an essay by the translator of this week’s story, Gale A. Kirking. It was a riddle that required my reading two wonderful novels and a collection of short stories to sort out. In dedicating the novel Rustic […]
“She pouted her painted lips and was still walking toward the ballot box and her hands were now moving down again, from beneath the skirt, and I caught a glimpse of white fabric in her fingers, but I could not see more, because Táňa was standing in front of me and the ballot box on […]
K never made it to the Castle but he can take some solace in the fact that his struggle will now grace the shelves alongside the battles between caped heroes and masked villains with the publication of the comic The Castle. By way of the Czech Literature Portal I came upon the recent release of […]
“Blood pounded in my temple, and my sweat turned cold. With nowhere else to go, I pressed my entire body against the fence, so hard that the chain links would leave their impression on my back. I couldn’t kill the bird. Our eyes locked, and we stared each other down. As I gazed into the […]
At Hungarian Literature Online (HLO) there is a very thorough summary of the efforts by translator Tim Wilkinson and Contra Mundum Press to bring Hungarian writer Miklós Szentkuthy (1908–1988) into the international prominence many feel he deserves. The latest Szentkuthy work published in English is his Marginalia on Casanova, with Towards the One & Only […]
Kafka’s work has been transformed into many, many things. There are of course film and TV adaptations, graphic novels and the like. I’m sure there’s a Franz Kafka action figure and probably one of a bug with a backdrop of Prague. There was even a porn star (okay, maybe actor – I have no idea […]
“Here Sasha and I are on our way, on the road, walking along a strip of asphalt through the woods. Around us it is May, the first green leaves, the first butterflies. After the winter we crawl out of Moscow into the big wide world as blind as moles, crusted with fungus and mildew. We […]
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