It Happened on the First of September (or Some Other Time)A Historical Novel from 1938 to 1968by Pavol RankovTranslated from the Slovak by Magdalena Mullek Reviewed by Michael Stein The 20th century has no shortage of places and times known for name changes and shifts of identity. There was Golden Age Hollywood, where Brooklyn-born Margarita […]
In commemoration of the death of Czech writer Jan Balabán ten years ago at the age of forty-nine, B O D Y editor Jan Zikmund has reviewed the English version of Balabán’s short story collection Maybe We’re Leaving, translated from the Czech by Charles S. Kraszewski. He writes about how Balabán writes “quiet”, compact stories […]
“The collection’s cast of characters includes, among others, a child-like dwarf creature who needs to be kept away from water and serves as a litmus paper in the human world, an ex-stripper ceaselessly emitting cigar smoke in emulation of her act of long ago and an old woman whose devoted tending of the apricot tree […]
Culture.pl offers a listing of new Polish books being published in 2018, including novels from writers such as Olga Tokarczuk, Dorota Masłowska and Jerzy Pilch as well as a two-volume biography of the great Zbigniew Herbert among many others offerings. Tokarczuk has a few books translated into English, most recently the novel Flights, translated by […]
World Literature Today has issued its list of the 75 notable translations of the year and it includes three books that were excerpted in B O D Y as well as numerous writers, translators and publishers whose work has previously appeared in the magazine’s pages. An excerpt of Balla’s In the Name of the Father […]
Into the Spotlight is a soon-to-be-published anthology of contemporary Slovak fiction including writers such as Uršuľa Kovalyk, Pavel Vilikovský, Monika Kompaníková and many more. It was translated by Julia Sherwood and Magdalena Mullek and published by Three String Books (an imprint of Slavica Publishers). You can read my review of this fantastic anthology here. Read […]
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 […]
The Vegetarian by Han Kang has awarded the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. The novel was translated into English by Deborah Smith and published by Portobello Books. The author and translator are each awarded a prize of £25,000 as well as a trophy. If you haven’t read this novel yet you absolutely should. It’s amazing. […]
From fairy tales retold with some irreverent twists, along with scenes from the Macedonian past, present and unreality to two very different worlds of implicit and explicit violence on either end of Soviet domination – one in Dagestan after the fall of communism, the other in newly occupied Prague in the 50s. Innocence; or, Murder […]
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