Two Polish science fiction/fantasy stories have put their translators on the shortlist of the 2012 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards. Both were nominated in the short form category for individual stories. “Spellmaker” by Andrzej Sapkowski, translated by Michael Kandel for A Polish Book of Monsters anthology, which was reviewed here earlier this year. While […]
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Francis Bacon and Bohumil Hrabal
Two Geniuses: Francis Bacon & Bohumil Hrabal is a recently opened exhibition at The Gate Gallery that presents an illuminating parallel between two masters of their respective mediums. Both developed unique styles that swam against the current of modern art and literature. “If Bohumil Hrabal had been a painter he would have painted like Francis […]
Literary roundup: red cards for Eastern Europe
Where to look to discover new writers? At MFA programs, readings, literary magazines? Wrong. Israeli daily Haaretz tells the remarkable story of parking attendant turned writer Leonid Pekarovsky (or Russian art critic and intellectual turned parking lot attendant turned writer). Having emigrated from Kiev to Israel, Pekarovsky discovered that his intellectual pursuits back home meant […]
Literary confinement: Part II – canon fodder and writing in the default mode
In a recent article on revivals of plays by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, Los Angeles Times theater critic Charles McNulty uses the occasion to identify some shortcomings in contemporary theater that apply equally, if not even more closely, to contemporary fiction. He distinguishes the work of these two modern greats not only in degree […]
Literary roundup: Russians in New York
BookExpo America (BEA) starts June 2 in New York, with a fantastic looking ReadRussia program. Guests include Russian émigré writers and editors such as Marina Adamovich, Alexander Genis and Yuri Miloslavsky. Miloslavsky mentions the correspondence between Tsar Alexander I and Thomas Jefferson, something which would certainly cause Jefferson to lose any potential Tea Party support. […]
Martin Vopěnka’s Fifth Dimension
Czech author and publisher Martin Vopěnka was a guest at the Prague Writers’ Festival in 2012 and spoke to literalab about his path to becoming a writer, the influence of his studying physics on his most recent novel and his foray into children’s and young adult fiction in The Sleeping City. Read the full article […]
Playing the instruments of thought
On the BBC’s “A Point of View” writer Will Self takes on readers and critics who oppose the use of difficult words, and by extension, of difficult art altogether. The main thrust of his critique is that educators, critics and the reading public are demanding that the bar be lowered from a level of reading […]
Franz Kafka Prize goes to Czech writer Daniela Hodrová
The Franz Kafka society announced today that this year’s Franz Kafka Prize goes to writer and literary theorist Daniela Hodrová. There were a few years where the Kafka Prize was seen as a golden globe-like preview of the Nobel Prize for literature after Elfriede Jelinek and Harold Pinter won both in successive years. My guess […]
St. Petersburg’s lost poet
Today marks what would have been the 72nd birthday of poet Joseph Brodsky. Two months after his death in January 1996, Czeslaw Milosz wrote in Index on Censorship of what was at stake in Brodsky’s poetry: “In one of his essays Brodsky reflected that Mandelstam was a poet of culture. He too was a poet […]
Literary roundup: Rossica Prize for best post-horses of enlightenment
Congratulations to John Elsworth for winning this year’s Rossica Translation Prize for his translation of Andrei Bely’s Petersburg. I don’t remember exactly how he put it but I remember Nabokov writing how untranslatable the novel is. Hopefully, this means he was wrong. The other shortlisted books all sound great – and include Vasily Grossman’s The […]
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