The newly established Czech Book Award (Cena Česká kniha) has announced its shortlist of 20 titles out of 109 titles submitted by Czech publishers. A list of seven finalists will come out in April and the winner will be announced as part of Book World Prague on May 19. Shortlisted authors that can be read […]
The latest issue of the University of California at San Diego’s literature in translation magazine Alchemy includes Slovak actor/singer/writer Július Satinský’s Dostoevsky’s Letter translated by Magdalena Mullek. If you haven’t already been tempted to read it then a look at the story’s byline should more than convince you: “A letter from Fyodor Mikhailovich, of Great […]
“There is one kind of literature which never reaches the voracious masses. The work of creative writers, written out of the author’s real necessity, and for his own benefit. The awareness of a supreme egoism, wherein laws become significant. * Every page should explode, either because of its profound gravity, or its vortex, vertigo, newness, […]
In Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulić has a far-reaching exploration of European identity by looking at two very different forms of change taking place in Italy. On the one hand, there is the influx of refugee immigrants coming to the island of Lampedusa and the southern coastal city of Bari. It is a story of incredible privations […]
“To your mad world—one answer: I refuse.” – from new translations by Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine of Marina Tsvetaeva’s “Poems to Czechoslovakia.” The latest issue of Poetry magazine features a number of selections of the work of Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva. I will soon be writing something about Tsvetaeva’s brief but impactful time living […]
This year not only will Poland and Ukraine co-host the UEFA European Football Championship, they will also collectively celebrate the 120th anniversary of the birth of Bruno Schulz. This isn’t just a friendly gesture – both countries have some claim on the brilliant writer as his Galician hometown of Drohobycz is in today’s Ukraine and […]
The Budapest Times has an article comparing the number of statues erected to notable figures with the idea that it will reveal something of “the intellectual and spiritual state of a nation.” Looking at the number of statues of writers put up since 1989 offers an interesting contrast: Albert Wass (writer): 49 Sándor Márai (writer): […]
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky has been receiving a lot of critical attention lately due to the NYRB’s publication of his novel The Letter-Killers Club (most recently today in the latest Quarterly Conversation) but it was another of his unpublished, unseen works that recently saw the light at Princeton University. For the 1937 centennial of Alexander Pushkin’s death, […]
The New York Times has an article on the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s putting its archives online. The organization, which is known as “the Joint” (except perhaps among old-school gangsters) will be making its massive archives of photographs (100,000) and information (containing 500,000 names) available with a searchable index. The Times has a slideshow […]
The Best Translated Book Award’s longlist was just announced and its 25 titles contain a handful of novels from this part of the world: Poland: Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski, In Red by Magdalena Tulli Hungary: Fiasco by Imre Kertész, Kornél Esti by Dezső Kosztolányi Serbia: Leeches by David Albahari French novels dominate the […]
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