Documentary film commemorates humor and humanity of Czech writer who lived through and documented history’s darkest days Approaching the anniversary of Czech-Jewish writer Arnošt Lustig’s death on Feb. 26, 2011 at age 84, a new documentary film celebrating his life and work is being released, titled Arnošt Lustig – devět životů (Arnošt Lustig – Nine […]
I’m not sure where on the scale of literary ambitions getting your face on a postage stamp should be ranked, but Prague-born writer Franz Werfel has just achieved this distinction. I have to admit to never having read a word Werfel wrote, though I have read a lot about him over the years. Last summer […]
Czesław Miłosz is known primarily as a poet, then essayist and man of ideas. What he is definitely not thought of as is a writer of science fiction. Yet according to his biographer Andrzej Franaszek, as reported in Polish weekly Przekrój (and translated by Project Forum website Salon), he was working on a science fiction […]
The PennSound collection of audio recordings of writers and artists includes readings and discussions with contemporary Russian poets as well as archival recordings featuring poets from Yeats to Mayakovsky. The University of Pennsylvania’s PennSound collection is an extensive archive of poetry readings, discussions, film clips and other related material and links. Contemporary Russian poets have […]
Poland’s Museum of Literature has sent off two members of its staff in the footsteps of novelist Witold Gombrowicz on a journey from Warsaw to Buenos Aires. Not that these intrepid museum employees are planning to remain in Argentina for decades in relative obscurity, creating works of literary genius (although you never know). In fact, […]
The day after the ceremony in which he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in Prague, Irish novelist John Banville came to the Kafka Society’s basement haunts and, against the backdrop of Kafka’s old library, spoke about his work, murderers (and looking like a murderer), Nabokov, and a number of other things. Below is the […]
Polish writer Bruno Schulz continues to gain some of the acknowledgement he failed to obtain during his tragically shortened life. Earlier this month a festival devoted to Schulz took place in Lublin in Eastern Poland, not far from his native Drohobycz (today Drohobych, Ukraine). The festival is called Bruno4ever, a title which, if Schulz were […]
Having come to his full powers as a writer whose novels and stories could not be published during Stalin’s growing stranglehold on power, whose plays could almost never hope to be performed, Bulgakov is now a hot commodity in the entertainment world. The latest news is that Stone Village Pictures – makers of The Human […]
An article in Czech Position on the 2011 Josef Škvorecký Prize going to Czech novelist, screenwriter and documentary filmmaker Martin Ryšavý for his novel Vrač. Continue Reading
Miroslav Penkov, author of East of the West:A Country in Stories, has a post on the official blog of The Story Prize about how when he first arrived in the US, in spite of telling friends he would wait to write in English until he felt comfortable with the language, he began submitting stories written […]
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