You cannot make this stuff up. It requires multiple Kafka organizations, Kazakh embassy press services and lazy, incompetent journalists to create the right effect. Less than a month ago I wrote about the shadowy European “Franz Kafka” Circle Prague, which seems to award its Franz Kafka Medal just before the internationally renowned Franz Kafka Society […]
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Peter Mendelsund on jacketing fiction
The first part of an essay by book jacket designer Peter Mendelsund on his blog Jacket Mechanical covering just what it is his job involves. And he starts with a bang, as it were, questioning some of cover designs for Nabokov’s Lolita because: “It is easy to forget, especially easy given the soft-core Lolita renderings […]
Conrad Festival in Krakow
The Conrad Festival is underway in Krakow as the Polish city celebrates the literary heritage of the English novelist born as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. Among the Polish and international guests at the festival are Michel Houellebecq*, Andrzej Stasiuk, Roberto Calasso, Alberto Manguel, David Grossman, Eva Hoffman and Jacek Dehnel. The festival was opened by […]
Boris Akunin: Menace II Society?
It seems Russian book banning mania has not abated since I last wrote about the subject not all that long ago. The latest target – novelist Boris Akunin, author of the successful Erast Fandorin detective series among others. On October 27 the news got out that the senior investigator of the Moscow branch of the […]
Gabriela Adameşteanu in New York
Romanian novelist and journalist Gabriela Adameşteanu’s best known novel Wasted Mornings (Dimineata pierduta) was a huge critical and commercial success when it was first published in Romania in 1984 and numerous translations followed. The English translation by Patrick Camiller was published this year by Northwestern University Press and on November 3 Adameşteanu will be appearing […]
Eastern Europe galore: new magazines
Eastern Europe has made its way into a lot of recently published magazine issues. First of all there is Timothy Snyder’s fantastic article in the NYRB on Galicia (requires subscription) “A Core of European Tragedy, Diversity, Fantasy,” in which figures as diverse as Emperor Joseph II, Stanisław Przybyszewski, son of the composer Franz Xaver Mozart, […]
Komiksfest 2011 in Prague
A preview of Komiksfest 2011 on Czech Position. The festival features guests such as Pascal Rabaté, Dave McKean, Anke Feuchtenberger, Konstantin Komardin, Dario Adanti and Paco Roca. Hopefully, I will have some interviews up next week. Read the full article here … Photos – 1) From Ibicus by Pascal Rabaté, 2) Black Holes by Dave McKean, […]
Writing on the Danube: Part 1 on Readux
Writers from Germany to Bulgaria take a literary boat trip down the Danube and attempt to explore issues of European identity, the chaotic state of the world and the precarious situation of freelance writers. The Danube runs almost 3,000 kilometers from the Black Forest in Germany all the way to the Black Sea, and has […]
John Banville collects Kafka Prize
Irish novelist John Banville was presented the 11th annual Franz Kafka Prize on Tuesday by the Franz Kafka Society, with various Czech dignitaries in attendance. The ceremony took place in Prague’s Old Town Hall, and the internationally celebrated writer, critic and author of a book on Prague spoke about how he imagined the proceedings would […]
Péter Nádas: ‘Parallel Stories’
Parallel Stories by Péter Nádas is being published in the US on October 26. The 1,152 page novel took the Hungarian writer 18 years to complete, which is one the reasons it is being “hailed” as a “once-in-a-generation literary event.” Considering the recent New York Times lament that so many top American novelists like Jeffrey […]
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