At Slovakia’s Project Forum Salon there is a summary of a lengthy interview with Polish novelist, essayist and literary historian Stefan Chwin, who has recently written not only one but two books about Czesław Miłosz, so basically if he’s going to give an interview about him it’s going to be long. Just from the summary […]
Boris Akunin’s Sebald Lecture delivered in London on February 4, is now available online. He talks about motherly manipulation, being tramautized by Steinbeck – i.e. everything you’d expect a lecture on translation to be about. But he also talks about the specific place of translation in the Soviet Union and how it was “cleaner” than […]
The Jerusalem International Book Fair runs from February 10 to 15 and as always there are a lot of writers and events in literalab’s sphere of interest. At the literary cafes these include Hungarian writer and previous Angelus award winner (link) György Spiró, who will be speaking about his autobiographical novel Dreaming For You. Polish […]
On Wednesday January 16, the American Center in Prague will be hosting an event (PDF) exploring the themes of the recently translated Czech novel Rustic Baroque by Jiří Hájíček. Titled “Collectivization – Restitution – Literature”, the panel discussion will feature the author as well as the novel’s translator Gale A. Kirking and collectivization historian Jiří […]
There’s a burst of Polish crime in the UK this week starting at today’s Folkestone Book Festival with the appearance of A.M. Bakalar and Zygmunt Miłoszewski as part of Polish Book Autumnfest. Bakalar’s Madame Mephisto has been reviewed here, while I’ve only briefly noted Miłoszewski’s excellent Entanglement and will have a review of his recently […]
In its 16th year in Prague Forum 2000 begins its first full day today after kicking off with an opening ceremony last night that included Joan Baez singing “We Shall Overcome” and will now follow up with discussion panels on the state of the media that may well disagree with Ms. Baez’s sentiments. We shall […]
The fourth annual Conrad Festival begins on October 22 in Kraków, the city the great writer moved to as a child before he hit the seven seas and eventually settled down to become an Englishman. In fact, the festival has nothing to do with Joseph Conrad other than borrowing his lofty patronage to welcome similar […]
The Prague Centre for Jewish Studies is currently holding its first annual conference: “Jewish Studies in the 21st Century. Prague – Europe – World” (program – mostly in Czech). On Thursday, October 18, I attended the literary segment of the conference at the Clam-Gallasův Palace and under five imposing crystal chandeliers heard various presentations about […]
The release of the recommendations of the EU’s European Platform for Literary Translation (PETRA) took place during a Frankfurt Book Fair panel on translation on Friday, Oct. 12. “In most countries, literary translators are in need and have trouble earning a living,” the report states (this incidentally is also true of literary critics, bloggers and […]
Book fairs are a very strange phenomenon. There are many, many kinds of trade fairs but it’s likely that there isn’t a kind as diametrically opposed to the basic function that sustains it as a book fair is to the solitary act of reading. One the one hand all this interaction is vitally necessary – […]
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