The 23rd Book Festival Budapest begins today with neighboring Slovakia as the guest of honor. Many authors who have appeared in B O D Y and Literalab will be present, including Uršula Kovalyk, Viťo Staviarsky, Pavel Vilikovský, Jana Juráňová and Slovak translator Julia Sherwood. The festival includes a First Novel festival comprising 16 European […]
2015 Nobel Prize for literature winner Svetlana Alexievich gave her speech (available in a translation by Jamey Gambrell) a couple days ago in Stockholm and like her books it was a mix of her present reflections, witness testimonies as well as her diary entries stretching from 1980 to 1997. Her conclusions aren’t very cheerful, but […]
As Women in Translation Month continues and accompanied by a Q&A with translator Megan Berkobien on Spanish and Catalan women writers B O D Y republishes a bleak, atmospheric story from the archives by Uruguayan-born poet, novelist and short story writer Cristina Peri Rossi. “After Hours” is translated from the Spanish by Megan Berkobien.
To Nora Iuga, literature, love, eroticism and death go together and even grow interwoven, becoming interdependent. Nora Iuga speaks openly of her age – she is now 83 – but also of sexuality. Also of the eroticism of old age – a subject which many consider taboo, but which is absolutely real. She writes of […]
The 2012 PEN Translation Fund Grants have been announced, with the work of two Central European writers among the final 12. A Hóhér Háza (The Hangman’s House) by Andrea Tompa, translated by Bernard Adams tells the story of a Hungarian-Romanian family living through the final two decades of Ceauşescu’s Romania. Tompa is president of the […]
An article on Aleksandar Hemon and Nicole Krauss presenting Dalkey’s Best European Fiction 2012, on the good old translation conundrum, on old men no longer reading fiction (from a very good source) and another kind of cut in the publishing industry besides job cuts. Read the full article at Czech Position
At various times since the fall of the Iron Curtain there have been outbreaks of fear that hordes of criminals would cross the Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Hungarian borders to pillage the wealth of Western Europe. In 2012, it looks as if this long awaited crime wave is actually coming to pass, though in […]
Eastern European literature snuck its way into the pages of The Guardian last week when former Granta-editor Ian Jack revealed the hoax behind Albanian writer Jiri Kajane. Following publication of Kajane’s stories in American literary magazines such as Glimmer Train, the Chicago Review and the Michigan Quarterly Review in the mid 90s, Jack became interested […]
“The rest is vibration. The old man went on laughing and listening to the distinct vibrations of love at a distance in the outer quarters of Bucharest. The apparatus had been perfected at this point, and its accuracy had increased so greatly that all the old satyr had to do was close his eyes, and […]
The Belarus blacklist The cultural and media blacklist that the government of Belarus has denied exists and which Russian writer Victor Erofeyev recently referred to being on, seems to be having a growing influence according to this article in Transitions Online. Rock concerts have been cancelled due to imaginary illnesses and paintings by artists such […]
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