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 […]
Ten years after it came into print in English I finally overcame my reluctance to read Andrey Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin. So what was holding me back all this time? Honestly it was some of the reviews I read – the ones which talked about how the book provided a convincing portrait of post-Soviet […]
Russian novelist and celebrated war correspondent Vasily Grossman is the focus of a conference at Oxford as well as a radio dramatization of his epic novel Life and Fate on BBC Radio 4. The conference is taking place on September 9 (which is today, so hurry) and includes discussions of Grossman’s work and life, its […]
Danielle de Picciotto’s Berlin memoir begins with her arrival in the divided city in 1987, though its story follows threads back into her and her family’s past as well as the dark, glittering history of the German metropolis itself. Artist, musician, filmmaker, curator, co-founder of the Love Parade and more, she brings a wealth of […]
On September 9, the British Library will host an evening devoted to the great Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem. Discussions of Lem’s work and film screenings will take place in conjunction with the publication launch of Lemistry: A Celebration of Stanisław Lem, an anthology featuring three previously untranslated stories as well as commissioned works by […]
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 […]
An old relic of the Tsarist regime – Alexandra Sergeyevna Pumpianskaya – disappears from a Moscow communal apartment in what turn out to be the dying days of the Soviet Union, while her neighbors scheme over who gets the newly available square meters. A detective appears on the scene, as does an acquisitive, chess-playing locksmith […]
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 […]
Publishing collective Calypso Editions has followed up its new translation of Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does a Man Need and its collection of Polish poet Anna Swir’s poems about the Warsaw Uprising, Building the Barricade and Other Poems, with an anthology of Romanian poetry titled Of Gentle Wolves. Translated by Martin Woodside the slim book […]
Somewhere there is bound to be a librarian doing their earnest best to classify Miroslav Penkov’s brilliant debut collection of stories East of the West. At first glance it seems fairly straightforward. Penkov is Bulgarian and the book is subtitled “A country in stories” – that country being Bulgaria. Yet the book was written in […]
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