Michal Hvorecký was among the Slovak writers included in the Slovak issue of the Dalkey Archive Press’ Review of Contemporary Fiction. Born in 1976 he is part of a younger generation of writers expanding the bounds of Slovak writing and gaining a growing international readership, though at this point far more in German translation than […]
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The Belarus blacklist
The Belarus blacklist The cultural and media blacklist that the government of Belarus has denied exists and which Russian writer Victor Erofeyev recently referred to being on, seems to be having a growing influence according to this article in Transitions Online. Rock concerts have been cancelled due to imaginary illnesses and paintings by artists such […]
Sándor Márai – the definition of a Central European writer
The publication of the novel Embers brought the name of Sándor Márai back into the international spotlight somewhat. Since then a number of translations into English have followed – most recently Portraits of a Marriage, which a review on Hungarian Literature Online says is actually a grouping of two Márai novels. Although known as a […]
Russian writers at the London Book Fair
The London Book Fair will take place from April 11 – 16th with a focus on contemporary Russian literature. The lineup includes the presence of 50 of the country’s most prominent writers and literary figures, including the author of the modern classic Pushkin House Andrei Bitov, Ludmila Ulitskaya and Boris Akunin among many others. Paying […]
Tolstoy: How Much Land Does a Man Need
Choosing a new translation of a lesser known work by Leo Tolstoy – How Much Land Does a Man Need – for its inaugural publication, as Calypso Editions has done, might not seem the most typical choice for an independent publisher. The short story is a moral fable of a peasant lured by the devil […]
Bulgarian Noir
At the Fiction Writer’s Review there is a great interview with Vladislav Todorov, whose debut novel Zift was published in English last year. About a thief named Moth unjustly imprisoned for murder in 1944 he is released in the communist Bulgaria of 1963 only to be poisoned by his former criminal partner, Slug. In the […]
Blacklist blues
On the Slovak Project Forum’s Salon website Russian novelist Victor Erofeyev laments Russian indifference to the dictators of the world. Whether it’s Qaddafi or Lukashenko, whose regime recently issued a blacklist of international figures not to be mentioned on state-controlled media in Belarus – a list that includes Victor Erofeyev – protests have been virtually […]
Kafka’s old office – now a hotel room
From 1908 to 1922 Franz Kafka worked at the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague. Considering his work was virtually unknown in his homeland after his death, then banned successively by German occupiers and the communist regime, Kafka’s traces in his former city were not very well guarded. Today though, […]
György Spiró on Hungarian Literature Online
On Hungarian Literature Online a review of György Spiró’s yet to be translated Spring Exhibition, a novel whose main character misses out on the 1956 uprising due to a hemorrhoid operation. There is also an interview with the author where he talks about the difficulty of dealing with anachronistic communist lingo and his memories of […]
Calypso publishes Tolstoy, Polish and Romanian poetry
Calypso Editions is a new artist-run, cooperative press that showed its uniqueness right from the start, launching with a new translation of Tolstoy’s classic yet lesser known novella How Much Land Does a Man Need in December 2010. The next release was a bilingual Polish-English collection by the Polish poet Anna Swir (Świrszczyńska) called Building […]
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