File this under: it couldn’t happen in America. It is one of the stranger publishing stories I’ve seen in a while. The trophy wife of former Czech Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek, Petra Paroubková, is publishing a Czech translation of a guide for brothel owners by someone who apparently knows what he’s talking about. The author […]
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Fess up: the Festival of the European Short Story
Sunday, May 27 sees the beginning of the 2012 Festival of the European Short Story (FESS) in Zagreb. The festival has a fantastic-looking new website which unfortunately still has some kinks to work out (clicking on a link for an interview with David Albahari I arrived at a wordless page that had a photograph of […]
Book World Prague’s Emphasis on Black Sea Writers Pays Off
An article on Publishing Perspectives examining the success of Book World Prague in spite of the economic downturn Everybody is crying, there is a drop in sales of up to 20%. There is a big problem with piracy as well as a big problem with the copying of textbooks. Nevertheless, for the first time in […]
Literary confinement: Part I – on restricted reading and the production of factory fiction
When I was 17 years old and deciding where to go to college I went on a visit to the University of Miami because I was considering studying at their music school. The sight of white cork-lined practice rooms that looked like jail cells made me a bit uneasy from the outset, but it was […]
Enter the Czech Literature Portal
While everyone seems vitally concerned with the portal Loki utilizes to make a surprise appearance on earth in The Avengers there is another portal I’d like to turn your attention to. If you haven’t gone to the Czech Literature Portal site yet now is your chance. From the beginning of May I have taken on […]
Book World 2012: exploring Black Sea literature
Book World Prague takes a plunge into Black Sea literature, opening up literary vistas barely known to international audiences The guest of honor at this year’s book fair is Romania, and according to Book World Prague (BWP) director Dana Kalinová, this gave them an opportunity to make a broader presentation of writing from other countries […]
Alexander Kluge in Prag
Work of Alexander Kluge, among the boldest filmmakers and writers of the past 50 years, as well as being a key figure in New German Cinema, gets Prague showing It is not uncommon to find artists who came to film from work in other mediums. Some are painters turned filmmakers, while others turned to film […]
Czech Literature Night goes European
From the works of Havel and Mácha to the Tata Bojs and a Hungarian vampire, Europe celebrates its literature What began as a Czech project called Literature Night has now spread from Prague across the continent, with Czech and European authors appearing and having their work read from London to Yerevan. In its fourth year […]
Literary roundup: Bulgarian brunch (with Absinthe) and well-read cities
Absinthe: New European Writing #17 – the Bulgarian issue is ready and on the way to subscribers. So subscribe, order it. Besides the work of a lot of great Bulgarian writers I have an essay in it on some recent adaptations that have made it to Bulgaria’s silver screen. I will also soon have some […]
Writers beyond the page
Being a good or great writer is certainly no guarantee of having a great, good or even remedial grasp of politics, culture or, really, anything at all. Yet there are writers whose intellect outside their books approximates their intellect in their books, and so it can be worth hearing what they have to say. For […]
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