A feminist version of Don Juan, a 900-page work of Greek surrealism that is a mixture of Joyce, Freud and Breton, one of the best Russian novels of the 20th century – and 27 more to go. The European Society of Authors released its third annual Finnegan’s List at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, with […]
The Frankfurt Book Fair is in full swing, exhibiting the full spectrum of all the literary and publishing world has to offer. What is this spectrum, you ask? At one extreme great writers and an array of fantastic books – some already available in English, others calling out from their respective countries’ stands saying “translate […]
Marek Bieńczyk has won Poland’s top literary award for Książka twarzy (A Book of the Face). The Nike Literary Award (Nagroda Literacka NIKE) has been in existence since 1997 and has had Olga Tokarczuk, Wiesław Myśliwski, Jerzy Pilch and Czesław Miłosz among previous winners. Speaking of Miłosz this year’s Audience Award went to Andrzej Franaszek […]
The 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair kicks off on Wednesday and as the world’s largest book fair will have quite a bit of interest in the way of books, writers and publishing talk and news. Just in terms of Central and Eastern European writers there will be writers such as Russian poet and essayist Olga Martynova, […]
At Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s Work in Progress historian Douglas Smith has a fascinating account of the origin, process and ultimate ambiguities he came up against in writing Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy. Beginning with a Connecticut dinner with a descendant of the Sheremetev family and on through accounts of meetings […]
American literary magazines and blogs have been awash with all the autumn releases – the so-called heavyweights (yawn) and many others of varying merit and interest. For a little perspective it’s interesting to look at Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza’s 20 most interesting fall books, as noted on Slovakia’s Project Forum Salon. Because the list is […]
As the ALTA conference goes into day two the European Society of Authors have issued an invitation to build a “literary and intellectual community committed to translation, transmission and mediation of literature in the different languages of the European continent.” Coincidence? Actually, presenting the whole issue as a European vs. American high-stakes competition might be […]
When the first Annual Conference of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) took place 35 years ago I didn’t really mind that I couldn’t go. I was nine, and barely read English-language writers, even those who filled speech bubbles in comic books. I was interested in other things. Times have changed. Today I would give […]
I wrote a brief tribute to translator Michael Henry Heim on Asymptote Journal as I was preparing an interview with him when I learned of his death on September 29. Reading about his singular career and reading so many of the amazing books he translated was and will continue to be a truly inspiring experience. […]
“It was as if there was a roulette wheel turning, not with numbers, but with destinations that had evocative names: Sofia, Odessa, Bangkok, Istanbul. He had been watching the wheel spin, waiting to see where the ball would finally land. He would be happy to go to any of these faraway places and so assumed […]
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