Joris-Karl Huysmans is best known for the representative novel of Decadence, À rebours (Against Nature), and its extreme aesthete protagonist Des Essientes as well as his masterpiece of Satanism, Là-Bas (Down There). But his prolific output included a great variety of no less extreme works, including the newly translated Un Dilemme (A Dilemma). The short […]
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Ciler Ilhan in B O D Y
Turkish writer Çiler İlhan won the European Union Prize for Literature in 2011 for her short story collection Exile and now the English translation by Ayşegül Deniz Toroser Ateş is being published Istros Books. Besides İlhan, B O D Y has published three other EU Prize for Literature winners: Montenegrin Ognjen Spahić, Serbian Jelena Lengold and […]
Literary roundup: Prague marathons and Caucasian weddings
The New York Times has an article that uses the occasion and course of the Prague Marathon to venture into Czech dissidence and history as well as some very interesting issues of a renewal of interest in political debate among the younger generation of artists and writers and how this is controversial. The whole article […]
Sozopol Fiction Seminars 2015 – application deadline
There are only a few days left to apply for this year’s Sozopol Fiction Seminars that will take place on the Black Sea coastal town of Sozopol from June 18-22. The application deadline is March 20. The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation’s program offers full scholarships for 10 writers to come to Bulgaria – five English-speaking, five […]
Ivan Srsen in B O D Y
Croatian writer Ivan Sršen’s debut novel Harmattan follows a Nigerian woman imprisoned in Germany for nothing more than entering Europe without the proper documents. Read an excerpt of the account of prison life in Saturday European Fiction in a translation by Marino Buble. Read more Saturday European Fiction
Cartarescu’s ‘Blinding’ wins Leipzig Book Award
Romanian writer Mircea Cărtărescu has won the Leipzig Book Award for his trilogy Blinding. The novel originally came out in three separate parts in 1996, 2002 and 2007 respectively, while its outstanding English translation by Sean Cotter was published as a single book by Archipelago Books in 2013. The award’s full name is the “Leipzig […]
Literary Roundup: Pushkin Prize and Berlin launch
The Pushkin House Russian Book Prize shortlist for 2015 has been announced and has some very interesting titles. It includes Polish writer Jacek Hugo-Bader’s Kolyma Diaries: A Journey into Russia’s Haunted Hinterland, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. You can read translations of Polish prose and poetry by Lloyd-Jones in B O D Y. The Zhivago Affair: […]
Salvador Elizondo in B O D Y
“Despite the disasters and misfortunes of our age, one of the pleasures life has given me has been witnessing the appearance of four or five Mexican poets and writers. One of them is Salvador Elizondo.” – Octavio Paz Published in 1965, Salvador Elizondo’s Farabeuf ran counter to the magical realism of Latin American fiction and […]
New and Novel
Two Mexican novels, one dealing with highly relevant contemporary subject matter and another first translated into English 50 years after its publication that though from the same country might as well come from a different universe. Another novel receiving its belated debut in English, from the 1930s Berlin underworld and a new Finnish novel about […]
Michael Kumpfmüller in B O D Y
In 1923 the 40 year-old Franz Kafka met the 25 year-old Dora Diamant at a Jewish vacation camp on the Baltic Sea. They fell in love and decided to move together to Berlin, though Kafka was already suffering from the tuberculosis that would kill him less than a year later. Read an excerpt from Michael […]
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