Books From Slovakia has a fantastic interview Daniela Balážová held with Slovak writer Pavol Rankov, author of the recently translated It Happened on the First of September. Among many topics Rankov talks about how the different translations deal with all the different languages used in the novel (spoiler: differently) and also talks about the lost multicultural […]
For the occassion of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Istros Books is publishing Ludovic Bruckstein’s collection With an Unopened Umbrella in the Pouring Rain, translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth. Bookanista has an excerpt from the novel here as well as a review of a pair of novellas published by Istros as The Trap. There […]
A new selection of some of Kafka’s short prose is being published by Archipelago in a translation by Peter Wortsman. Titled Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka, the book comprises stories, journals and letters, as well as including “The Transformation”, more commonly known as “The Metamorphosis”. The book is coming out Oct 18. On Oct […]
On Sept 29 there will be a book launch for The Absolute Gravedigger by Vítězslav Nezval, translated into English by Stephan Delbos and Tereza Novická and published by Twisted Spoon Press. The great Czech poet published the book in 1937 and is considered one of the masterpieces of interwar surrealism. Novická and Delbos received a […]
Two Mexican novels, one dealing with highly relevant contemporary subject matter and another first translated into English 50 years after its publication that though from the same country might as well come from a different universe. Another novel receiving its belated debut in English, from the 1930s Berlin underworld and a new Finnish novel about […]
The 20th century’s darker chapters loom large in this week’s newly published books, with a story of romance set during the Auschwitz trials, a story of trickery and imagination written by one of the victims of Stalin’s Terror from Georgia, and the long-awaited translation of one of Hungary’s legendary works of modernism. This […]
The difficulties of getting writing translated into foreign languages is often taken as a particularly current subject, as if the glut and popularity of English-language bestsellers, the Internet and modern publishing are obviously to blame. But the case of Miklós Zrínyi would make even the most happily obscure contemporary poet shudder. He published his Hungarian […]
There must be something in the air. The Center for the Art of Translation’s Two Lines just came out with its annual anthology, titled “Counterfeits,” including a special section edited by Luc Sante focusing on noir literature. Then, Words Without Borders’ September 2011 issue came out with an issue devoted to an elevated form of […]
Polish quarterly magazine Res Publica Nowa has published a special English-language issue “Central Europe as City.” Besides the editorials, there are five articles from the issue available online on the Eurozine website and they contain some fascinating information. Articles cover an array of topics – from the multicultural history of today’s Bratislava to the Jews […]
An article in Berlin literary magazine Readux about Arthur Koestler, his newly reissued Dialogue with Death and defining one of the 20th century’s most polarizing intellectual figures. Link: Koestler on Readux Photo – Arthur Koestler, Paris 1937 – by Fred Stein
literalab 