On February 20 Prague literary journal B O D Y is hosting an evening of the work of Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva by translator Mary Jane White. The translations will be accompanied by excerpts from the Russian originals and a scholarly talk about “the soundscape of Kafka’s and Tsvetaeva’s writing. “The evening kicks off with […]
In a world where overhyped English-language books playing on a predictable single-note formula (take your pick – 1. Quirky, 2. Topical, 3. Autobiographical) all too often overshadow masterpieces by writers from the wider world, it’s clear that international literature needs its champions. And champions it has, though not that many, and maybe not any who […]
Boris Akunin’s Sebald Lecture delivered in London on February 4, is now available online. He talks about motherly manipulation, being tramautized by Steinbeck – i.e. everything you’d expect a lecture on translation to be about. But he also talks about the specific place of translation in the Soviet Union and how it was “cleaner” than […]
The Jerusalem International Book Fair runs from February 10 to 15 and as always there are a lot of writers and events in literalab’s sphere of interest. At the literary cafes these include Hungarian writer and previous Angelus award winner (link) György Spiró, who will be speaking about his autobiographical novel Dreaming For You. Polish […]
The clock is ticking on the Kickstarter deadline for a project to make a partially animated documentary film about Jan Karski, the Polish resistance hero who tried to bring the Holocaust to light at a time when many people found the reports they were hearing too hard to believe. It’s called Karski & The Lords […]
Prague literary journal B O D Y has an unbelievable story from award-winning Czech writer Tomáš Zmeškal. “Vision of Hitler,” translated by Nathan Fields, is a story that is even more unnerving in keeping the reader guessing what kind of story it is than in its ultimate subject matter (though that’s unnerving too). What begins […]
On February 4 in London, Russian novelist Boris Akunin will deliver the annual Sebald lecture titled “Paradise Lost: Confessions of an Apostate Translator.” Akunin, a pen name for Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili, is known primarily for his historical mystery series such as the The Adventures of Erast Fandorin, but before becoming a famous writer was an […]
The shortlist for the biennial Man Booker International Prize has been announced and it’s notably less Anglocentric than previous years with only three of the 10 listed authors writing in English, and one of those was born and raised to the age of 20 in the former Yugoslavia, that being Josip Novakovich (Canada). The other […]
When I went to see Jiří Hájíček talk about his novel Rustic Baroque (Selský baroko) at Prague’s American Center in mid-January he made an obvious but still very interesting point about what distinguishes the English-language translation of the book from the other translations that have come out so far. He said that not only for […]
At Project Forum’s Salon German writer Michael Krüger has a fascinating account of the numerous bonds that exist between Hungary’s great contemporary writers and Germany, of how virtually all of them speak excellent German (while, in my experience, many speak little or no English at all), and are extremely well-read in German literature. These connections, […]
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