In the wake of Phillip Roth’s retirement announcement another prestigious Jewish writer getting up there age-wise, has decided to lay down his pen. Hungarian writer Imre Kertész has said he’s finished writing in an article in ActuaLitté. Unlike Roth, Kertész pins his decision down to subject matter, and having exhausted the theme of the Holocaust […]
It’s a novel about the early days of the Russian Revolution, the civil war and the famine that ravaged the Soviet Union. The extremes of hunger and poverty are set off against the high living and obscene wealth of those taking advantage of the Soviet government’s New Economic Policy. A story of love and betrayal […]
If there is one reason to prefer the boxing to the literary world it is that its heavyweight division is determined by a specific number of pounds (minimum 200, or 90.7 kg.) whereas there are no clear indicators for how heavy a writer has to be to be referred to as a heavyweight. This became […]
The New Literature From Europe festival kicks off today in New York City with reading and discussions taking place at a variety of venues in Manhattan beginning at 6pm. The focus of this year’s festival is the meeting point between writing and art, asking “why European writers are writing about art, about artists, and about […]
The Central European Forum takes place in Bratislava from November 15 to 18 and there are a host of writers from the region taking part, including Serbia’s Vladimir Arsenijević, Slovenia’s Drago Jančar (last year’s European Literature Prize winner – more below), Hungary’s György Konrád, Czech Jáchym Topol, Poland’s Andrzej Stasiuk and many more. The conference […]
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych celebrated the Day of Ukrainian literature and language with a rousing (though admittedly not so well-translated message): “The Ukrainian language is the powerful factor in the consolidated state-building that contributes to the enrichment of the spiritual culture of the society.” Uh, yeah . . my sentiments exactly. The day commemorates 12th […]
Translator Alex Zucker was in Prague to speak about his translation of Jáchym Topol’s novel The Devil’s Workshop (Chladnou Zemí), which will be published in June 2013 as well as his previous Topol translation City Sister Silver. To give an idea of the difficulties presented in translating Vladislav Vančura’s 1931 modernist masterpiece Markéta Lazarová, which […]
The literary history of Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odessa is the focus of British novelist and journalist A.D. Miller’s article on the Odessa State Literary Museum “The Odessaphiles” at The Economist’s Intelligent Life. It’s a nice introduction to the city’s mythical place in Russian history, literary and otherwise, especially in regard to Isaak […]
Kateřina Tučková has been awarded the 2012 Josef Škvorecký Prize for her novel Žítkovské bohyně (The Goddesses of Žítková). She beat out finalists such as Michal Ajvaz and Marek Šindelka for her book about mystical women in the White Carpathian mountains. Read more about Tučková, her work and check out the cool trailer for the […]
And Werfel’s friendship with another Prague German writer named Franz From the time his first book of poetry Friend of the World was published to great success and acclaim when he was 21 until his death 34 years later in exile in Los Angeles, Franz Werfel didn’t need to have his name brought to readers’ […]
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