Murder in 1930s Budapest provides a panorama of a lost world Vilmos Kondor’s Budapest Noir begins with a pair of deaths. On the one hand, these deaths practically could not have less to do with one another. The first is the real life death of Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös on October 6, 1936 in Munich; […]
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Political minefield of literary prize nominations in Belarus
Two nominees from Belarus have been put forward for the Nobel Prize in Literature and the names reflect the split between the Lukashenko-friendly, officially sanctioned and its opposite in the country. The official nominee of the Union of Writers of Belarus is Georgi Marchuk, his third time in the running. The head of the official […]
Literary roundup: Polish vampires, Russian apartment sellers and German inadequates (take your pick)
After arresting him and then throwing him out of the country the (admittedly different, i.e. not quite Soviet) Russian government is redressing the poetic balance by opening a museum to poet Joseph Brodsky in his former St. Petersburg apartment. The catch – the city government owns all the rooms of the apartment except one, and […]
‘Prague Fatale’ by Philip Kerr – Review
A WWII crime novel depicts the hunt for Czech resistance fighters, their German contact and the perpetrator of a seemingly impossible crime “And if I had really been as single-minded and independent as Heydrich said I was, I would probably have told him he was wrong: murder – even political assassination – is rarely ever […]
Prague cafés retain splendor of another age
“When the great actor Norinski entered the National Café, which is located in front of Prague’s Czech Theater, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he started a little – but then immediately smiled his most disdainful smile.” This is the opening line of the short story “King Bohush” by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in […]
Literary roundup: robots and the posthumous wit and force of Vladimir Nabokov
On January 25, 1921 Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) had its official premiere at the National Theater in Prague (The first performances took place in early January in a regional theater in Hradec Králové). Besides being the writer’s most successful work it added the word robot to our international vocabulary. The play was […]
Literary roundup: Bulgakov, Faust and Yiddish in Japan
A Japanese expert on German-Jewish intellectual history refers to Kafka’s obsession with Yiddish theater in a lecture and the end result is a 28,000 word Japanese-Yiddish dictionary that you can own for the bargain basement price of $770. A fascinating article on Yiddish in Japan, from early Russian-Jewish emigrants to WWII refugees saved by Japanese […]
Dostoevsky’s The Gambler
The number of films based on the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky is approaching the 200 mark, which is not quite Dickens territory (324 according to IMDB) but places him above virtually every other 19th century novelist and ahead of all the Russian masters (Tolstoy, who has a big Hollywood adaptation coming to the screen this […]
Kupka, Prague and daydreaming: Guggenheim puts art books online
The Guggenheim Museum has put 65 art books and exhibition catalogues online. They can be read online or downloaded in a number of different formats – and all for free. The selection covers a wide range of Modern Art but from literalab’s geographical focus the highlights are a heavy dose of Kandinsky. Besides his 1911 […]
Bruno Jasieński’s Parisian dance of death
“The ambulances’ ominous horns wailed in the black tunnels of the streets, like a lonesome scream for help. The dancing stopped here and there and the unsettled crowd quickly dispersed to their homes. In Montparnasse, the Latin Quarter and a few other districts inhabited by foreigners, dancing continued. The horns howled relentlessly, mournful and terror-stricken.” […]
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