A WWII crime novel depicts the hunt for Czech resistance fighters, their German contact and the perpetrator of a seemingly impossible crime “And if I had really been as single-minded and independent as Heydrich said I was, I would probably have told him he was wrong: murder – even political assassination – is rarely ever […]
“When the great actor Norinski entered the National Café, which is located in front of Prague’s Czech Theater, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he started a little – but then immediately smiled his most disdainful smile.” This is the opening line of the short story “King Bohush” by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in […]
On January 25, 1921 Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) had its official premiere at the National Theater in Prague (The first performances took place in early January in a regional theater in Hradec Králové). Besides being the writer’s most successful work it added the word robot to our international vocabulary. The play was […]
A Japanese expert on German-Jewish intellectual history refers to Kafka’s obsession with Yiddish theater in a lecture and the end result is a 28,000 word Japanese-Yiddish dictionary that you can own for the bargain basement price of $770. A fascinating article on Yiddish in Japan, from early Russian-Jewish emigrants to WWII refugees saved by Japanese […]
The number of films based on the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky is approaching the 200 mark, which is not quite Dickens territory (324 according to IMDB) but places him above virtually every other 19th century novelist and ahead of all the Russian masters (Tolstoy, who has a big Hollywood adaptation coming to the screen this […]
The Guggenheim Museum has put 65 art books and exhibition catalogues online. They can be read online or downloaded in a number of different formats – and all for free. The selection covers a wide range of Modern Art but from literalab’s geographical focus the highlights are a heavy dose of Kandinsky. Besides his 1911 […]
“The ambulances’ ominous horns wailed in the black tunnels of the streets, like a lonesome scream for help. The dancing stopped here and there and the unsettled crowd quickly dispersed to their homes. In Montparnasse, the Latin Quarter and a few other districts inhabited by foreigners, dancing continued. The horns howled relentlessly, mournful and terror-stricken.” […]
Poland has seen more than its share of monstrosities, having been invaded at one time or other by Nazis, Prussians, Hapsburgs, White as well as Red Russians, and even the Mongol Golden Horde. Therofore, if you think of the words monster and Poland in the same sentence it is most likely in reference to a […]
Czesław Miłosz is known primarily as a poet, then essayist and man of ideas. What he is definitely not thought of as is a writer of science fiction. Yet according to his biographer Andrzej Franaszek, as reported in Polish weekly Przekrój (and translated by Project Forum website Salon), he was working on a science fiction […]
The latest issue of The Hungarian Quarterly is out and contains an interview with László Krasznahorkai, whose novel Satantango is due to be published in February. The issue also has an excerpt from the book. Other articles of interest include an interview with pianist and regular NYRB contributor Charles Rosen talking quite a bit about […]
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