Romanian writer Mircea Cărtărescu has won the Leipzig Book Award for his trilogy Blinding. The novel originally came out in three separate parts in 1996, 2002 and 2007 respectively, while its outstanding English translation by Sean Cotter was published as a single book by Archipelago Books in 2013. The award’s full name is the “Leipzig […]
PEN America have announced the winners of most, though not all, of this year’s lucrative and sought after literary awards. Of Literalab interest is, above all, the PEN Translation Prize, which goes to Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov for their translation of Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, which was on the Best Translated […]
The recent centennial of Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal and the publication of Harlequin’s Millions in a translation by Stacey Knecht is the impetus for a number of Hrabal-based events coming up this week. On May 6, Knecht will be in conversation with writer Caleb Crain at 192 Books in New York City. And NYRB and […]
The Missing Slate has published an excerpt from the fantastic novel Samko Tále’s Cemetery Book by Slovak writer Daniela Kapitáňová and translated by Julia Sherwood. The book was published in the UK by Garnett Press in 2011 but has yet to find a US publisher. First published in Slovakia in 2000 to great success the […]
With the much anticipated publication of Mircea Cărtărescu’s Blinding imminent the Romanian author is engaged in a North American tour, with appearances in Minnesota, Chicago, Boston, New York and Toronto. You can see the full schedule here. Translated into English by Sean Cotter the novel isn’t any easier to read than his Nostalgia but like the […]
The New Literature From Europe festival kicks off today in New York City with reading and discussions taking place at a variety of venues in Manhattan beginning at 6pm. The focus of this year’s festival is the meeting point between writing and art, asking “why European writers are writing about art, about artists, and about […]
“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.” […]
literalab 