“The writer bought a literary magazine, leafed through it, and was gratified: he hadn’t submitted anything and none of his work had been published. A few weeks later the annual nominations for the national literary prize were announced: to his relief, he wasn’t nominated…” So begins Balla’s short story “Paper Planes“, translated from the Slovak […]
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World Literature Today’s 75 Notable Translations of 2017
World Literature Today has issued its list of the 75 notable translations of the year and it includes three books that were excerpted in B O D Y as well as numerous writers, translators and publishers whose work has previously appeared in the magazine’s pages. An excerpt of Balla’s In the Name of the Father […]
Yury Kazarnovsky in B O D Y
In 1927, Russian poet Yury Kazarnovsky was arrested along with 11 other students as part of what the Soviet authorities considered a subversive literary circle and was sent to the Solovki prison camp, generally considered the first Gulag. Despite its brutal hardships the camp had a cultural and intellectual life, among which is the literary […]
Interview with Aleksandar Gatalica
Serbian Fiction Week gets some context with an interview with novelist and translator from Ancient Greek Aleksander Gatalica, whose novel The Great War was excerpted in B O D Y back when it was published in 2014 in a translation by Will Firth. Gatalica talks about contemporary Serbian writers and the different generations, makes some […]
Serbian Fiction Week: Dana Todorovic in B O D Y
From The Tragic Fate of Moritz Tóth by Dana Todorović, translated by the author, as Serbian Fiction Week continues at B O D Y. This excerpt shows one of the twin narratives of the novel which pairs the story of a punk rocker, Moritz, who works as a prompter at the Budapest Opera, with that […]
Serbian fiction in B O D Y
It’s Serbian Fiction Week in B O D Y so a good time to point out the Serbian writers who have already appeared in the magazine over the years. There was an excerpt from Aleksandar Gatalica’s novel The Great War translated by Will Firth. An interview with Gatalica will appear in B O D Y […]
Serbian Fiction Week: Mirjana Novakovic in B O D Y
The Turks are closing in on Belgrade but the regent appointed by the Hapsburgs is preoccupied with more threatening and elusive foes – vampires. And not only the regent. Count Otto van Hausberg, the novel’s main narrator has come to Serbia to see if the bloody rumors are true. He’s terrified and yet he also […]
Justin Quinn on Bohuslav Reynek
Poet and translator Justin Quinn has written an essay in B O D Y on translation and the work of Czech poet Bohuslav Reynek, whose selected poetry he has translated in an edition to be published in November 2017. The Well at Morning: Selected Poems, 1925–1971 is being published by Karolinum Press and if you […]
Aleksei Lukyanov in B O D Y
Russian writer Aleksei Lukyanov begins his story “Entwives” with a reference to the aforementioned entwives from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the female tree creatures lost to their male tree-creature counterparts. But then the story takes a precipitous turn into pretty rough Russian schoolyard banter before taking a few darker a very […]
Literary roundup: Ranking Russians, Glas and Balla
Way back in 2013 when the world wasn’t utterly collapsing I had the foresight to publish an excerpt from Balla’s novella In the Name Of the Father, translated from the Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood. Now the book has been published by Jantar Publishing and translator Charles Sabatos has written about it in the […]
