Two novelists, among many others – not to mention a host of non-novelists – have thrown in their two cents on the situation in Ukraine from two very different points of view. Natalka Sniadanko is a Ukrainian writer and translator (of Kafka, Czesław Miłosz, Olga Tokarczuk and Zbigniew Herbert among others). Writing in the New […]
“Sasha noticed some busses bearing the coat of arms with a fanged beast. The curtains in the bus windows trembled. People were sitting in those busses, waiting for an opportunity to step out, to run out, clutching rubber mallets in tough fists, looking angrily for somebody to hit, and to hit them with flourish, to […]
There is a some environmental and personal catastrophe in Kazakhstan and a story in interwar Central Europe ending in a journey to the concentration camps. Then a very different journey from Moldova pointing towards the promised land of Italy, some Ottoman intrigue and conversations with Orhan Pamuk, and three works by Chekhov. […]
Serbian writer Jelena Lengold, author of the short story collection Fairground Magician, is appearing at Europe House in London on Friday, February 21 for an evening of conversation. The collection was published by Istros Books in 2013 in a translation by Celia Hawkesworth, after having won the European Union Prize for Literature in 2011. Read […]
“Superman, you say?” Vassily mumbled, musing over the name which we all assumed he must have heard of. “And you say he has special powers . . you mean of thinking?” “No Vass, he can leap over a building in a single bound and stuff like that. Get it?” Suzie said. “In fact, no. I […]
From a book of essays that charts everything from the “listlessness of Central Europe to the ennui of the Low Countries” to a series of books that covers pretty much the rest of the bases by dealing with “Life and death—under water, and in the sky. Sinister picnics. Hellish cafeterias.” (If there’s anything else in […]
The story of the beautiful and tragic Dagny Juel, inspiration to Munch and Strindberg among others; Polish science-fiction, an autobiography of a physician and party girl in Weimar Berlin, Charlotte Wolff, and an English-language debut novel from Georgia are among the new books being featured this week. Nest of Worlds by Marek S. Huberath Nest […]
“Have I told you the story about the guy who butchered hogs?” “Which guy?” “The one who was in the Foreign Legion. Have I told you that one?” “Is it for real?” And so starts the very short story, “One Big Mess” by Croatian writer and author of Our Man in Iraq Robert Perišić in […]
Literalab favorite and author of the Death and the Penguin Andrey Kurkov has written a compelling piece about the protests and government crackdown in Ukraine for English PEN. The opening paragraph, with its account of the murder of two protesters and the abduction from a hospital of two opposition activists, one of whom was then […]
“About Death itself he knew everything: it would be difficult to find someone who could outdo him in his knowledge of its causes and effects, its kinds and types. Perhaps he would not excel at questions of its usefulness: not one of his teachers or rulers had instructed him about such secrets because the question […]
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