A selection of non-fiction about Central and Eastern Europe noted by critics in the year’s “Best of” lists The best Central and Eastern European non-fiction books of 2011 differ significantly from the fiction in that with only a couple of exceptions they are written about the region in English rather than being from the region […]
The second part of an article in Berlin’s Readux on the Literature in Flux program and the river it took place on. Stories of piracy, swimming feats, drowning and love – some true, some fictional and some a combination of the two. What they all have in common is The Danube. Continue Reading Photo – […]
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 […]
“But who would Joyce be if he wrote not in English but, say, in Albanian?” It is not only the existence of Central Europe that can be called into question apparently, but of Europe itself. “Perhaps Europe as a single entity actually does not exist after all,” begins a lecture presented at last month’s European […]
The 14 semi-finalists for the Angelus Central European Literature Award have been announced, including works by writers such as Andrzej Stasiuk, Jenny Erpenbeck and Ismail Kadare. The award is for a Central European novel published in Poland and will be presented to the chosen winner at a mysterious future date in the Polish city of […]
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 greatest literary figures of Central Europe in the twentieth century (Kafka, Musil, Broch, Gombrowicz, but Freud as well) rebelled (they were very much alone in that rebellion) against the legacy of the preceding century, which in their part of Europe bowed under the particularly heavy weight of Romanticism. They felt that in its vulgar […]
Some literary stars, like the cautious Don DeLillo, had to be enticed to the festival, while Nobel laureate Derek Walcott volunteered himself The 21st Prague Writers’ Festival (PWF) — with a thematic title of Some Like it Hot — begins Saturday, April 16, with a program packed with literary encounters, including readings, discussions, book signings […]
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 […]
Link: The shadows of Central Europe The Conspirators by Michael Andre Bernstein shows another side of the Central European literary heritage, that of the region as a setting and a subject, maybe even, with its cafe conspirators, religious fanatics and haunted self-made men, as a whole genre in itself.
literalab 