The new issue of The Critical Flame has a pair of reviews devoted to a new translation of the selected poetry of Osip Mandelstam, Stolen Air, by Christian Wiman and Ilya Kaminsky. Editor Daniel E. Pritchard pens a brief essay on the unusual practice of running two reviews of the same book. Then there’s Henry […]
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Literary roundup: The first Prague expat poet and Pushkin’s Pushkin
English-speaking expats coming to Prague to write poetry and become famous – yes, you’ve heard that one before and assume that piece of ancient history dates back to the early 1990s. In fact, it stretches just a bit further back, and on November 24 in Prague there will be a series of events commemorating Elizabeth […]
Literary roundup: New Czech novels and the real Magical Prague
Czech writer Jiří Hájíček was one of the names on this year’s Finnegan’s List when fellow Czech novelist, graphic novelist and playwright Jaroslav Rudiš selected his 2012 novel Rybí krev (Fish Blood) among the three books to be more widely translated into European languages. In this case more widely is easy to define as the […]
Literary roundup: Imre Kertész’s retirement, Hermann Ungar makes Top 10 and Tolstoy’s head
In the wake of Phillip Roth’s retirement announcement another prestigious Jewish writer getting up there age-wise, has decided to lay down his pen. Hungarian writer Imre Kertész has said he’s finished writing in an article in ActuaLitté. Unlike Roth, Kertész pins his decision down to subject matter, and having exhausted the theme of the Holocaust […]
‘Cynics’ by Anatoly Mariengof
It’s a novel about the early days of the Russian Revolution, the civil war and the famine that ravaged the Soviet Union. The extremes of hunger and poverty are set off against the high living and obscene wealth of those taking advantage of the Soviet government’s New Economic Policy. A story of love and betrayal […]
Literary roundup: Russian heavyweights and a Bulgarian brand
If there is one reason to prefer the boxing to the literary world it is that its heavyweight division is determined by a specific number of pounds (minimum 200, or 90.7 kg.) whereas there are no clear indicators for how heavy a writer has to be to be referred to as a heavyweight. This became […]
Literary roundup: New Literature From Europe in NYC and a Croatian short story
The New Literature From Europe festival kicks off today in New York City with reading and discussions taking place at a variety of venues in Manhattan beginning at 6pm. The focus of this year’s festival is the meeting point between writing and art, asking “why European writers are writing about art, about artists, and about […]
Literary roundup: CE Forum, Vladimir Makinin and ©
The Central European Forum takes place in Bratislava from November 15 to 18 and there are a host of writers from the region taking part, including Serbia’s Vladimir Arsenijević, Slovenia’s Drago Jančar (last year’s European Literature Prize winner – more below), Hungary’s György Konrád, Czech Jáchym Topol, Poland’s Andrzej Stasiuk and many more. The conference […]
Literary roundup: Ukrainian Lit Day, another Bulgakov film, Russian women writers
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych celebrated the Day of Ukrainian literature and language with a rousing (though admittedly not so well-translated message): “The Ukrainian language is the powerful factor in the consolidated state-building that contributes to the enrichment of the spiritual culture of the society.” Uh, yeah . . my sentiments exactly. The day commemorates 12th […]
Literary roundup: Looking for Czech translators and the devil’s many roles
Translator Alex Zucker was in Prague to speak about his translation of Jáchym Topol’s novel The Devil’s Workshop (Chladnou Zemí), which will be published in June 2013 as well as his previous Topol translation City Sister Silver. To give an idea of the difficulties presented in translating Vladislav Vančura’s 1931 modernist masterpiece Markéta Lazarová, which […]
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