“Prilepin has not merely turned inside out the consciousness of the entire post-Perestroika generation of politicized young Russians and laid it bare, but he also, in large part, predicted the patterns of development of radical political groups and the government’s strategy in combatting them.” This is from Alexei Navalny’s introduction to Sankya by Zakhar Prilepin, […]
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Jana Juranova in B O D Y
“Beginning in reverie and a nostalgic glance back at the protagonist’s early life and dreams, Jana Juráňová’s Ilona. My Life with the Bard subtly shifts to a tone of gentle and increasingly piercing irony towards Slovakia’s national poet, with moments of almost nightmarish confinement, as it becomes clear that there was a heartlessness at the […]
Literalab’s Best Books of 2014: McSweeney’s 46
I have finally begun my ‘Best Books’ list and this year I’m not doing it all at once but am featuring the very best books with reviews and/or links of their own. One of my very favorites this year was McSweeney’s Latin American Crime issue and I reviewed it today in B O D Y. […]
Literary roundup: Hispabooks and Belarus Free Theatre
The Literary Saloon pointed my attention to a profile of Hispabooks in El Pais’s Trans-Iberian. The Madrid-based publisher has already put out a fantastic selection of new Spanish writers, including the award-winning Marcos Giralt Torrente’s Paris, which was excerpted in B O D Y earlier this year. Unfortunately, the article brings in the tired “read […]
Marek Hlasko in B O D Y
“The stout man looked at Israel for the first time since he’d walked into the restaurant. He placed his glass on the table and said, ‘You should go away. You aren’t suited for this country and you don’t like it. Dov loves it. Too bad he’ll come to such a stupid end.’ He gazed into […]
Interview with Magdalena Platzova in WWB
Czech writer Magdaléna Platzová is appearing in New York City for the New Literature From Europe festival from Dec. 5 to 6, and for the occasion I have an interview with her in Words Without Borders, where her short story, “This Time Last Year”, ran in last month’s Czech issue in a translation from Czech […]
Literary roundup: Beginning of the ‘Best of’ lists and Bulgarian translation
It is Best Books of the Year time and The Guardian’s Nicholas Lazard has put together a great best paperbacks of 2014 that includes a Literalab Best Book of a couple years back, when it was a paperback too, but, never mind. The book in question is Seven Terrors by Selvedin Avdić. It also includes […]
New Literature from Europe 2014
A festival of contemporary European writing in which Literalab and B O D Y are media partners is taking place in New York City this Friday and Saturday, December 5 and 6th. New Literature from Europe 2014 at the Austrian Cultural Forum features nine writers from all across Europe, including the Polish author of Chasing […]
Prilepin + Jaszberenyi among B O D Y’s Pushcart nominations
B O D Y has announced its six Pushcart Prize nominees and the two fiction writers among them were Russia’s Zakhar Prilepin for the excerpt from his novel Sankya, published this year by Dzanc Books and Hungary’s Sándor Jászberényi for The Devil Is A Black Dog, the title story of his soon-to-be published story collection […]
Russian Lit Week in NYC 2014
Russian Literature Week begins on Monday Dec. 1 in NYC, consisting of live and online events celebrating the translation of contemporary and classic Russian writing. There will be panel discussions, roundtables and readings with leading writers, translators and publishers as well as film screenings focusing on writers from Pushkin to Prilepin. Many of the participants […]
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