A new column at Literalab that will follow-up B O D Y’s Sunday European Fiction starts off with an essay by the translator of this week’s story, Gale A. Kirking. It was a riddle that required my reading two wonderful novels and a collection of short stories to sort out. In dedicating the novel Rustic […]
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Jiri Hajicek in B O D Y
“She pouted her painted lips and was still walking toward the ballot box and her hands were now moving down again, from beneath the skirt, and I caught a glimpse of white fabric in her fingers, but I could not see more, because Táňa was standing in front of me and the ballot box on […]
Kafka in comics
K never made it to the Castle but he can take some solace in the fact that his struggle will now grace the shelves alongside the battles between caped heroes and masked villains with the publication of the comic The Castle. By way of the Czech Literature Portal I came upon the recent release of […]
Sándor Jászberényi in B O D Y pt. 2
“Blood pounded in my temple, and my sweat turned cold. With nowhere else to go, I pressed my entire body against the fence, so hard that the chain links would leave their impression on my back. I couldn’t kill the bird. Our eyes locked, and we stared each other down. As I gazed into the […]
Literary roundup: The Szentkuthy renaissance and Odessan letters
At Hungarian Literature Online (HLO) there is a very thorough summary of the efforts by translator Tim Wilkinson and Contra Mundum Press to bring Hungarian writer Miklós Szentkuthy (1908–1988) into the international prominence many feel he deserves. The latest Szentkuthy work published in English is his Marginalia on Casanova, with Towards the One & Only […]
Literary roundup: Kafka’s latest metamorphosis
Kafka’s work has been transformed into many, many things. There are of course film and TV adaptations, graphic novels and the like. I’m sure there’s a Franz Kafka action figure and probably one of a bug with a backdrop of Prague. There was even a porn star (okay, maybe actor – I have no idea […]
Irina Bogatyreva in B O D Y
“Here Sasha and I are on our way, on the road, walking along a strip of asphalt through the woods. Around us it is May, the first green leaves, the first butterflies. After the winter we crawl out of Moscow into the big wide world as blind as moles, crusted with fungus and mildew. We […]
Literary roundup: Literature in translation 2013 and Topol’s deviltry
Chad Post has put up this year’s Translation Database at the halfway point (60% or so complete – download the xl here). The list is for US releases so there are a lot of books mentioned here that aren’t on it because they came out in the UK. Here are some random observations on the […]
Literary roundup: Russian literature’s new generation in New York and at B O D Y
During Book Expo America in New York there was an interesting discussion on the future of Russian literature, as reported in Russia Beyond The Headlines. Participants included Debut Prize director and author of the novel 2017 Olga Slavnikova, author of Thirst (reviewed on Literalab here) and The Lying Year (currently being read) Andrei Gelasimov and […]
Marin Malaicu-Hondrari in B O D Y
“Roberto Bolaño says a poet can stand anything, and it’s worth writing poetry for that reason alone. I don’t know if Bolaño’s right. Still, he doesn’t say that only certain poets can stand anything, so…maybe if I were a poet, even a mediocre one, I might have experienced Mami’s death another way. All I know […]
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