Unless a writer is translated into one of the big languages – English, French, German, Spanish – then it becomes very hard to get translated into the smaller languages. Three EU Literary Prize winners – the Czech Republic’s Tomáš Zmeškal, Bulgaria’s Kalin Terziiski and Romania’s Răzvan Rădulescu, talk about the challenges facing writers from smaller languages […]
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Books picked right off the trees
It is a cliché that can be applied to almost anything – “You don’t know what you’re missing.” And in all likelihood you really don’t know. Not anymore though, at least as it relates to Czech books. The linguistic iron curtain is being lifted. The Czech Literature Portal will have regular English-language updates on recently […]
Literary confinement: Part III – On rock’n writing and the three-minute song
Part I of literary confinement dealt with the conformist aspect of needing to put translated literature into “the conversation” and what is lost when everyone reads virtually the same books. In Part II a couple critical takes on these issues from the world of theater were added to the mix, along with similarly conformist impulse […]
Best European Fiction 2012 – Part III – Death in Sicily
Clowns, volcanoes, love, jealousy, grief, birds and disease are the elements that make up Janusz Rudnicki’s haunting short story The beginning of Dante’s Divine Comedy sees the poet “halfway along life’s path” at 35 years old and lost in a dark wood. The beginning of “The Sorrows of Idiot Augustus” by Poland’s Janusz Rudnicki finds […]
Best European Fiction 2012 – Part II – novels in miniature
The two stories in BEF 2012 that stood out the most for me were Czech writer Jiří Kratochvil’s “I Loshad’” and “The Sorrows of Idiot Augustus” by Polish writer Janusz Rudnicki. The excellence of these two stories shouldn’t be all that surprising. For while these and other Dalkey anthologies try to give exposure to young […]
Literary roundup: Prince of Darkness and unbearable lightness
The Franz Kafka Society’s publication of the first Czech translation of the correspondence of Erika Mitterer with Rainer Maria Rilke alerted me to the existence of a fascinating sounding writer. She was still a teenager when she corresponded with the great poet, published her own poetry collection at 24 and went on to write a […]
Right turn for the next renaissance – Part II: In nihilism we trust
Part I: where American conservative Charles Murray’s scientific assessment of periods of cultural greatness is held up to a closer scrutiny than he would probably care for. The further Murray’s essay goes on, the more his conditions for cultural greatness fall into a deeper and deeper murkiness. At one point he sets up a hypothetical […]
Performing Kafka’s Year in Berlin
A Greek theater company’s production depicting Kafka’s year in Berlin reflects back on a time of financial collapse and growing menace that is frighteningly reminiscent of Europe today. It begins with a society rocked by financial collapse. Anger spills out onto the streets, the extreme left brandishing the hammer and sickle, the resurgent right raging […]
Best European Fiction 2012 – Part I – the dead white noise of space
I should admit from the outset that I haven’t always liked the short story form. When I first began reading with any dedication I had the impression that novels conjured entire worlds while short stories were content with slices of life. What’s more, the slice-of-life sensibility appeals so directly to verisimilitude that a story about […]
Right turn for the next renaissance – Part I: conservatism and kitsch
In this season of bitter political squabbling you would think that art and culture could provide a refuge from the name calling and finger pointing that seems to have taken the place of legitimate debate. Think again, because whether it’s Hungarian plans to ceremonially rebury the fascist writer Jozsef Nyiro or Dmitri Medvedev adding to […]
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