The 20th International Book Festival Budapest runs from April 18 to 21 with Italy as the country Guest of Honor and Michel Houellebecq as the writer Guest of Honor. Houellebecq’s novel Lanzarote will be published in Hungarian for the occasion. Among the Hungarian writers attending the festival are Noémi Szécsi, György Konrád, László Krasznahorkai and […]
“If Americans have their dozens, their hundreds of cartoon superheroes or Hollywood starlets with their perfect smiles, if Christians have their God and Muslims have their Allah, if gays have George Michael and girls who just got their first pubes have Lady Gaga, he now has Little Mary. That’s what he’s called her, no matter […]
“The Blake Precept” by Sándor Jászberényi and translated by Matt Henderson Ellis is the first story in Sunday European Fiction in B O D Y. The series will present short stories and novel excerpts in translation from all over Europe, especially of the great writers you probably haven’t heard enough about variety. There will be […]
My article on the recent Švankmajer exhibition in Prague has just been published in New Eastern Europe magazine’s Spring 2013 issue. “The Last of the Great Surrealists: Jan Švankmajer: Dimensions of Dialogue – Between Film and Fine Art” is about the Czech artist and filmmaker’s extremely diverse art and film work as well as his […]
The 4th Slovo Russian Literature Festival is well underway in London. Running from March 5 to 26 the festival celebrates Russian literature old and new, along with the links between the two. This is well illustrated by lectures being given on March 15 by contemporary novelist Dmitry Bykov (Living Souls, 2011) on Boris Pasternak and […]
“What begins as a glance extends into lingering contemplation. She is going through my passport page by page, as if reading a novel. Then she turns to the computer for some corresponding information and back again. Her eyes have lit up. My first reaction is pride, that she likes it, but then I remember that […]
In a world where overhyped English-language books playing on a predictable single-note formula (take your pick – 1. Quirky, 2. Topical, 3. Autobiographical) all too often overshadow masterpieces by writers from the wider world, it’s clear that international literature needs its champions. And champions it has, though not that many, and maybe not any who […]
Prague literary journal B O D Y has an unbelievable story from award-winning Czech writer Tomáš Zmeškal. “Vision of Hitler,” translated by Nathan Fields, is a story that is even more unnerving in keeping the reader guessing what kind of story it is than in its ultimate subject matter (though that’s unnerving too). What begins […]
The two novellas and five short stories that make up The Bridge Over the Neroch: And Other Works comprise the rest of the writing left to us by the author of Summer in Baden-Baden, Leonid Tsypkin. New Directions is bringing the book out in February 2013 and you can read my review in the 2nd […]
An essay on the death, music and aesthetic of the composer Anton Webern at Prague’s B O D Y. “Anton Webern was killed on September 15, 1945 in Mittersill, Austria. For a long time no one knew the exact circumstances of the great composer’s death and the musical world more or less accepted the mystery. […]
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