Kafka/Borges – Prague/Buenos Aires biennale takes place in the Czech capital this year with an added pair of literary greats in the mix Literary festivals are usually devoted to individual writers or the writers from a particular language or country. That a festival can be devoted to a pair of writers who never met one […]
Are English and American writers missing an opportunity to write political novels? And Jo Nesbø talking about the ethics of a fictional treatment of last year’s mass killing in Norway. Last week was rough for novelists. First their ability to write philosophical novels was questioned, now they are being taken to task for their inability […]
The finalists for this year’s Best Translated Book Award were announced and Central European books made a strong showing, with three titles on the 10-title shortlist. Last year there were only two finalists from the region whereas this year two Polish writers – Magdalena Tulli and Wiesław Myśliwski – made the cut along with Hungarian […]
The Czech Magnesia Litera award for the book of the year has gone to Michal Ajvaz for his novel Lucemburská zahrada (The Luxembourg Gardens). The novel is about a teacher in Paris named Paul who enters some kind of fantasy world where an unknown language is spoken when he accidentally types a word he hadn’t […]
“ … but what is a dream except the continuation of reality, or is reality the continuation of the dream?” – Ladislav Klíma, Glorious Nemesis In 1924 the first Surrealist Manifesto was published, elevating the blurring of dream and reality to an artistic imperative. That same year Franz Kafka was buried in Prague’s New Jewish […]
“When the great actor Norinski entered the National Café, which is located in front of Prague’s Czech Theater, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he started a little – but then immediately smiled his most disdainful smile.” This is the opening line of the short story “King Bohush” by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in […]
The Guggenheim Museum has put 65 art books and exhibition catalogues online. They can be read online or downloaded in a number of different formats – and all for free. The selection covers a wide range of Modern Art but from literalab’s geographical focus the highlights are a heavy dose of Kandinsky. Besides his 1911 […]
One of the features of Franz Kafka’s writing that some critics have had the biggest difficulty coming to terms with is his ability to take the reader from dark, despairing moments to scenes of almost slapstick comedy and then back again, sometimes in an instant, revealing parallels that both mock our sense of tragedy and […]
You cannot make this stuff up. It requires multiple Kafka organizations, Kazakh embassy press services and lazy, incompetent journalists to create the right effect. Less than a month ago I wrote about the shadowy European “Franz Kafka” Circle Prague, which seems to award its Franz Kafka Medal just before the internationally renowned Franz Kafka Society […]
Irish novelist John Banville was presented the 11th annual Franz Kafka Prize on Tuesday by the Franz Kafka Society, with various Czech dignitaries in attendance. The ceremony took place in Prague’s Old Town Hall, and the internationally celebrated writer, critic and author of a book on Prague spoke about how he imagined the proceedings would […]
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