Anna Andreyevna Gorenko was born on June 23, 1889. She went on to write some of the greatest poetry of the 20th century under the name of Anna Akhmatova. From “Requiem” ‘I arrive here as if I’ve come home!’ I’d like to name you all by name, but the list Has been removed and there […]
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Koestler, Germany and a Dialogue with Death on Readux
An article in Berlin literary magazine Readux about Arthur Koestler, his newly reissued Dialogue with Death and defining one of the 20th century’s most polarizing intellectual figures. Link: Koestler on Readux Photo – Arthur Koestler, Paris 1937 – by Fred Stein
The non-assassination of Jiri Kajane
Eastern European literature snuck its way into the pages of The Guardian last week when former Granta-editor Ian Jack revealed the hoax behind Albanian writer Jiri Kajane. Following publication of Kajane’s stories in American literary magazines such as Glimmer Train, the Chicago Review and the Michigan Quarterly Review in the mid 90s, Jack became interested […]
An interview with Pavel Vilikovský
Slovak writer Pavel Vilikovský on facts, realism and what he really learned about Central Europeanism from Olomouc and Camus Pavel Vilikovský’s Ever Green Is …: Collected Prose was published by Northwestern University Press in 2002, while a short story (also included in the NWU collection) came out in Dalkey’s Slovak fiction anthology in 2010. […]
The Sorrowful Putto of Prague
An interview with the creator of the comicbook Baroque anti-hero Xavier of the House of the Sorrowful Snows Since 1989 and the reemergence of Prague on the world stage, the city has become ever more closely linked with its Baroque artistic heritage. Write a novel that takes place in Prague and chances are the book […]
A curious novel, Kafka’s Amerika
“A curious novel, Kafka’s Amerika: indeed, why should this young twenty-nine-year-old writer have laid his first novel in a continent where he had never set foot? This choice shows a clear intent: to not do realism; better yet: to not do a serious work. He did not even try to palliate his ignorance by research; […]
The literary divide pt. 2 – Europe and the isolationism of American literary debate
There must be something other than pollen in the air, because literary disputes have been both more frequent and more heated than usual: the novel isn’t dead, one earnest article claims, it just happens to be the focus of a rearguard attack by the defenders of privilege. The ongoing debate over the value or worthlessness […]
Exile on a summer day
Following the opening day of a conference on “Scholars in Exile and Dictatorships of the 20th Century” being held in Prague, I trailed behind a group of international academics as they were carefully led the few blocks from the National Technical Museum to the hotel where “Welcome Drinks” were going to be served. It was […]
Joseph Brodsky
On May 24, 1940 the great Russian poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad. And while the 71st birthday of the man who was viewed by many, including Anna Akhmatova, as pulling the country’s poetic tradition out of the Stalinist ashes may not be occasion for parades on the streets of Moscow or […]
After the darkness: an interview with Michael Scammell
Michael Scammell came to the Prague book fair with two seemingly related tasks – to speak about his biography of Arthur Koestler, Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic, and to participate in a panel on Index on Censorship, of which he was the founding editor. And while issues of censorship […]
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