On the Slovak Project Forum’s Salon website Russian novelist Victor Erofeyev laments Russian indifference to the dictators of the world. Whether it’s Qaddafi or Lukashenko, whose regime recently issued a blacklist of international figures not to be mentioned on state-controlled media in Belarus – a list that includes Victor Erofeyev – protests have been virtually […]
Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk has written a compelling article about the interlinked history of the Polish and Jewish people at the Central European Forum’s Salon site. It comes in response to the controversy arising out of the upcoming publication of the book Golden Harvest (Złote żniwa) by Jan Tomasz Gross and Irena-Grudzińska Gross, which was […]
What can you say about Slovak fiction and the need to collect the work of some of its contemporary practitioners without having recourse to the inane cliché that it’s a way of learning about another part of the world? Because while some of the stories in the Dalkey Archive Press’ Review of Contemporary Fiction issue […]
The work of György Spiró and his relationship to Central Europe As the first part of this interview indicated, being a Hungarian who can speak Polish and other Slavic languages has been a tremendously important facet of György Spiró’s scope and identity as a writer. Besides the influences previously mentioned he also cited Serbian poet […]
Angelus-award winning Hungarian writer discusses his connection with Poland and the writing of unpleasant truths The Angelus Central European Literary Award is a literary prize awarded to the best regional prose work in Polish, so it would be logical to assume that the Central European part of the name designates the qualifying countries and nothing […]
My original idea was to write a series of posts about writing and theater in Belarus the week following the rigged elections to show the obstacles facing free expression in Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime. Although I felt that the political dimension of Belarusian writing is often overemphasized at the expense of literary qualities, it still seemed […]
Central European literary life A recurring obstacle to writing about Central European literature is the fact that it apparently doesn’t exist. As recently as this year, when Penguin UK brought out its series of Central European Classics, British novelist Adam Thirlwell began his overview of the collection by writing “I can put it like this. […]
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