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Central Europe: The devil’s playground

Book World Prague roundup Prague’s book fair just came and went and though I missed seeing a lot of the bigger names and featured events I was left with one strong impression that seems highly significant for Central European literature and the region as a whole. It is that Central Europe is fucked – no […]

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Book World Prague 2013

Prague’s book fair Book World Prague (BWP) 2013 runs from May 16 to 19, with some events having already taken place in various spots throughout the city. The main fair hosts Slovakia as this year’s Guest of Honor, with a significantly larger and less restricted group of writers attending the event than when, say, Saudi […]

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Prague Microfestival

The fifth Prague Microfestival of poetry runs from May 12 to 14 with an extra night of readings on May 15. Celebrating “new and innovative poetry that ventures into the realm of experimentation and the visual arts, unfettered by the narrow boundaries of national literatures” the festival brings together 12 writers from Norway, Croatia, the […]

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European Literature Night 2013

For a fifth year European Literature Night is taking place in cities throughout the continent. On May 15 work by writers dead and alive will be celebrated in a host of interesting locations, in both cosmopolitan locales whose names evoke a long cultural history – Florence, Bucharest, Vienna, London, Prague – all the way to […]

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Literary Roundup: Translating world voices

The PEN World Voices festival is underway in New York, running from April 29 to May 5. There are a lot of great events, including Mikhail Shishkin speaking on a panel about book reviewers, a conversation with Polish author of Russians in Warsaw Agata Tuszyńska, a Literary Safari including Hungarian Noémi Szécsi and Czech Michal […]

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Interview with author of ‘Keeping Bedlam at Bay in the Prague Café’

At Hungarian Literature Online there is an interview with Matt Henderson Ellis, whose novel Keeping Bedlam at Bay in the Prague Café was recently published by New Europe Books. The interview is titled “Prague kind of lends itself to neurosis,” which has instantly become my automated answer to the perpetual “Why did you move to […]

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Literary roundup: Budapest bookfest, Polish crime writing and a literary fabrication

The 20th International Book Festival Budapest runs from April 18 to 21 with Italy as the country Guest of Honor and Michel Houellebecq as the writer Guest of Honor. Houellebecq’s novel Lanzarote will be published in Hungarian for the occasion. Among the Hungarian writers attending the festival are Noémi Szécsi, György Konrád, László Krasznahorkai and […]

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Prague Writers’ Festival 2013

This year’s Prague Writers’ Festival, which takes place from April 17 to 19, has a distinctly political thrust. Grouped around the theme “The Birth of Nations” there are a pair of discussions between participating writers titled “Revolution” and “The Birth and Death of Czechoslovakia.” The star of the festival is Nobel Prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan […]

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Central and Eastern European Lit at the London Book Fair

The 2013 London Book Fair will take place from April 15 to 17 with Turkey as this year’s guest of honor. There will be a number of writers and events that touch on Central and Eastern European literature, including: GLAS New Russian Writing will be presenting Debut Prize winners Irina Bogatyreva, Alexander Snegirev and Olga […]

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Reading Russia – or writers from the place with onion domes

The 4th Slovo Russian Literature Festival is well underway in London. Running from March 5 to 26 the festival celebrates Russian literature old and new, along with the links between the two. This is well illustrated by lectures being given on March 15 by contemporary novelist Dmitry Bykov (Living Souls, 2011) on Boris Pasternak and […]

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