“On Thursday, as always, I was awakened by the radio. Listening to the news while brushing my teeth— I have a radio right in my bathroom— I heard about the flood in the state of Pueblo, Mexico in which two thousand people had drowned. Now, I don’t know if that was the first time this […]
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Central European writers in New York
From Nov. 14 through Nov. 16 the 10th annual New Literature from Europe festival will take place in New York featuring a number of authors from Central (but not only) Europe. Top of the list is Czech writer of the recently published The Devil’s Workshop, Jáchym Topol (top of the list, in this case, means […]
Robert Perisic in B O D Y
“All courses start in the fall, when a man has to start something, turn things around, survive. It’s always great in the beginning, but there’s a point with people like him, people who never make a second payment for their German, karate, creative writing, yoga…” From a short prose piece – “All Courses Start In […]
B O D Y’s Pavel Srut week
It’s all Czech poet Pavel Šrut all week in B O D Y, beginning with Monday’s essay by translator Deborah Garfinkle “Remembering Pavel Šrut’s Worm-Eaten Light” and continuing with her translations of his poetry and a review of his work. Worm-Eaten Light is the work Šrut published in 1969 following the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia […]
Cristina Peri Rossi in B O D Y
“He had always had vague, artistic visions, that is to say, he was a daydreamer. Because of this, at the age of fifty he had no house of his own, no wife (she had divorced him and he couldn’t say that he didn’t understand why), no steady work.” Do you remember that feeling when you […]
Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki in B O D Y pt. 2
“This was a symphony inside the sea, yes, inside the sea, for only now did I realize that we had, in fact, come to the seaside, complete with waves and the wind, that everything around was music and that somewhere in the distance a man was swimming, swimming in the waves and in the music, […]
Ilija Trojanov in transit
It is more than ironic that an author who for years has been speaking out about the dangers of surveillance and the secret state within the state should be denied entry in the “land of the free and home of the brave.” This is from an essay by Bulgarian-German writer Ilija Trojanov titled “Revenge for […]
M. Henderson Ellis in B O D Y
“Shirting asked her to read her essay aloud: My teacher is some small wildebeest. He is a name John Shirting. My name is Monika. He is the baddest person in this world. I feed him the cats. He is my darling. Dear Monika. The way she pronounced her w’s as v’s, calling him a vildebeest […]
‘An Extreme Case’ in B O D Y
“For this was always the dream of the founding fathers, who had imagined the country as a military base from the start, and it was also the dream of those who believed in the existence of the truly nonexistent country, in their Olympic victories, in their paper cars, in their astronaut’s wave. If a country […]
Literary roundup: Blinding and a four-legged crow
With the much anticipated publication of Mircea Cărtărescu’s Blinding imminent the Romanian author is engaged in a North American tour, with appearances in Minnesota, Chicago, Boston, New York and Toronto. You can see the full schedule here. Translated into English by Sean Cotter the novel isn’t any easier to read than his Nostalgia but like the […]
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