“Should I ask Jesus Christ for help, or should I write to our President in the capital? But even Jesus Christ himself is having a bad time and Comrade President could give an order to have Mama executed – after all, he is strict and fair. I’m afraid that Mama wouldn’t take her blindfold off […]
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 […]
Prague’s book fair Book World Prague (BWP) 2013 runs from May 16 to 19, with some events having already taken place in various spots throughout the city. The main fair hosts Slovakia as this year’s Guest of Honor, with a significantly larger and less restricted group of writers attending the event than when, say, Saudi […]
“A good day to all our passengers,” she said, smiling. “My name is Masha. Our flight today will be at an altitude of 6,000 meters. We’re flying to Malaysia. The captain of our crew is pilot first class Ivan Potapov. He is a very experienced pilot. He’s been in five air disasters and all five […]
For a fifth year European Literature Night is taking place in cities throughout the continent. On May 15 work by writers dead and alive will be celebrated in a host of interesting locations, in both cosmopolitan locales whose names evoke a long cultural history – Florence, Bucharest, Vienna, London, Prague – all the way to […]
“ … and for a moment he felt himself flagging inside her, that helped him, in fact, to wriggle out again and push her onto her back, now she was looking at him a little surprised, a little breathless, her eyes were shining like some crazed junkie’s, her pupils were enormous, she had placed her […]
“Abl-Eddin bowed and said: ‘You can execute me but you should grant me a fair trial. You can impale me, but let us first ask the people if they really grumble, if they are really discontented. You have the means to do so. I myself gave you these means. You can turn them against me […]
This week’s Friday Pick in B O D Y: “Open the pages of one of Marek Krajewski’s Eberhard Mock novels and you plunge into a unique and haunting world. It is a world pressed between the oppressive shadows of the two World Wars and seemingly losing its mind because of it; a world of secret […]
The Dalkey Archive Press has just published the Review of Contemporary Fiction: The Future of British Fiction. This is the Fall 2012 issue but don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that we now have months and months of cold weather in front of us (at least I hope it doesn’t). As usual, if you want to […]
“And suddenly I saw comrade Weed get up fast in the moonlight, and I heard a Jesus-fuckin’-Christ immediately muffled by the mat-lined earthen walls. That’s when I made out my friend’s greenish, frozen face, her eyelids lowered, her mouth gasping for air like a fish in an aquarium without water.” An excerpt from the novel […]
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