I’m not sure where on the scale of literary ambitions getting your face on a postage stamp should be ranked, but Prague-born writer Franz Werfel has just achieved this distinction. I have to admit to never having read a word Werfel wrote, though I have read a lot about him over the years. Last summer […]
Latest News
Central European fantastic – Czech and Hungarian edition
I have already written a little bit about Polish fantasy writing in reviewing The Polish Book of Monsters, so now here is something from the fantastical side of the Czech Republic and Hungary. Czech monsters At the Czech Literature portal there is a long outline of Czech fantasy, dating back to its pre-1989 origins and […]
Central European Crime Wave Sweeps Publishing
At various times since the fall of the Iron Curtain there have been outbreaks of fear that hordes of criminals would cross the Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Hungarian borders to pillage the wealth of Western Europe. In 2012, it looks as if this long awaited crime wave is actually coming to pass, though in […]
‘Thirst’ by Andrei Gelasimov
Thirst by Russian novelist Andrei Gelasimov is the story of a Chechen war veteran who returns home with a face disfigured in a grenade attack. He seems content to remain holed up in his apartment with a plentiful supply of vodka, staring at the TV until the search for a former comrade pulls him out […]
The Golem, Gestapo and a wandering Jew at London’s JBW
Jewish Book Week (JBW) inaugurates its 60th year on Feb. 18 in London, with a strong showing of Central and Eastern European literary events. Following a flight without end Joseph Roth might have thought of himself as an abandoned citizen of the vanquished Austro-Hungarian Empire, but from his origins in Brody, East-Galicia (today Ukraine) to […]
The Golem, Gestapo and a wandering Jew at London’s Jewish Book Week
Jewish Book Week inaugurates its 60th year on February 18 in London, with a strong showing of Central and Eastern European literary events. Joseph Roth , Daša Drndić, Ludmila Ultiskaya , Umberto Eco, The Golem and more … “I have nothing to do with the landscape, nothing to do with the sky. Nor anything to […]
Literary roundup: From Dresden to Dickens
February 13 is the anniversary of the Dresden bombing that took place in 1945. The bombing continues to provoke debate and beyond its historical significance has a number of connections with literary and cultural history. In the Irish Independent Eoghan Harris writes about “The moral dilemma posed by Dresden,” pointing out the impossibility of a […]
Literary roundup: Life’s cheerless dance – Szymborska, Joseph Roth and Satantango
Wisława Szymborska died on February 1 and as the remembrances and tributes pour forth a couple of very good ones that have come out in the last few days include Ruth Franklin’s “A Requiem to an Age of Brilliant Polish Poetry” at The New Republic and James Hopkin’s recollection of an interview with the poet […]
Births and deaths in Russian literature
February 10 was the date of possibly the worst of the tragic and premature deaths that have haunted Russian literary greats over the past two centuries. This was the day in 1837 that Alexander Sergeievich Pushkin died from the wounds he had received in a duel fought two days earlier with his brother-in-law and suspected […]
Covering book covers – international view
Book jacket design is an ever interesting topic which exhibits an often sharp difference of aesthetics among its practitioners. I have written about it before in interviewing Peter Mendelsund about his designs for a recent edition of Kafka’s works. On his own blog Mendelsund has recently offered an insider’s view of designing book covers in […]
literalab 