The latest issue of Words Without Borders is out and is devoted to Contemporary Czech prose. Edited and with an introductory essay by translator Alex Zucker, the issue includes writers who are likely little to totally unknown even to readers keeping up with contemporary European fiction. In his essay Zucker pushes at the political straitjacket […]
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 […]
From Nov. 14 through Nov. 16 the 10th annual New Literature from Europe festival will take place in New York featuring a number of authors from Central (but not only) Europe. Top of the list is Czech writer of the recently published The Devil’s Workshop, Jáchym Topol (top of the list, in this case, means […]
2013 winner of the Magnesia Litera prize for his novel Rybí krev (Fish Blood), Jiří Hájíček will be appearing in London together with his English translator Gale A. Kirking. The event will take place at the Slovak Embassy on October 17. Kirking will read from his translation of Hájíček’s highly successful novel Rustic Baroque (Selský […]
Milan Kundera wasn’t the only Czech writer to leave Czechoslovakia for France in the 1970s. Living a shadowy existence in another country is the subject of Lubomír Martínek’s story “Refugee” translated by Charles Sabatos. “Because the harbor was such a favored refuge for people escaping from various regimes, a lot of former political prisoners lived […]
“She pouted her painted lips and was still walking toward the ballot box and her hands were now moving down again, from beneath the skirt, and I caught a glimpse of white fabric in her fingers, but I could not see more, because Táňa was standing in front of me and the ballot box on […]
The Washington Post has an amazing article about teaching Russian literature in prisons in Virginia. Not only does it recount how convicted felons are getting enthusiastic about reading Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and company, and having their minds opened up to the wider possibilities of life by what they’re reading as opposed to being reformed or restrained […]
Czech writer Emil Hakl has a novel Of Kids and Parents and story collection On Flying Objects in English translation. Now Tinge Magazine has an excerpt from The Witch’s Flight, which is being published by Twisted Spoon Press later this year, in a translation by Marek Tomin, who previously translated Hakl’s novel. There is also […]
The trial over the fate of the Kafka manuscripts left in Max Brod’s possession, that he bequeathed to his secretary Esther Hoffe, has finally reached a settlement. The judge ruled that the manuscripts should go to Israel’s National Library, though of course Hoffe’s surviving daughter will appeal until the end of her own life, after […]
The 2012 PEN Translation Fund Grants have been announced, with the work of two Central European writers among the final 12. A Hóhér Háza (The Hangman’s House) by Andrea Tompa, translated by Bernard Adams tells the story of a Hungarian-Romanian family living through the final two decades of Ceauşescu’s Romania. Tompa is president of the […]
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