Have you ever met a wolf? Not alive. Dead? Dead, yes. Does that mean a stuffed wolf? One stuffed, one run over, one killed. So begins the first part of a fantastic interview with László Krasznahorkai in Hungarian Literature Online in which he talks about everything from the disappearance of high culture, historical shifts and […]
For their series “The Czech Books You Must Read”, Czech Radio has an interview with my B O D Y co-editor Jan Zikmund from the Czech Literary Centre on Jan Balabán, whose novel Where Was the Angel Going? was recently published by Glagoslav Publications in a translation by Charles S. Kraszewski. The same publisher/translator combo […]
The 20th century’s darker chapters loom large in this week’s newly published books, with a story of romance set during the Auschwitz trials, a story of trickery and imagination written by one of the victims of Stalin’s Terror from Georgia, and the long-awaited translation of one of Hungary’s legendary works of modernism. This […]
Throughout August, Literalab asked writers, translators and publishers to comment on both the women writers from their own language they most appreciate having been translated into English as well as those they would most like to see make the leap. Ágnes Orzóy is the editor of Hungarian Literature Online and editor-at-large at Asymptote. She has […]
PEN has announced its 2014 Translation Fund Winners and there are some cool and unusual writers that will be coming into English from this part of the world, and by this part of the world I mean in this case from a few blocks away from where I’m sitting writing this. One of the grants […]
In n+1 Sophie Pinkham parallels Ukraine today and through the eyes of the great but largely unknown Kyiv-raised Russian writer Konstantin Paustovsky, when, for a time certainly, the country was even more messed up than it is now, if you can believe it. There are lot of terrifying, depressing, interesting and surreal facets to the […]
Book Expo America begins on May 29 and among all the books about God, cats, wizards, S&M, self-help and various combinations of these there will be some books in translation in the spotlight. One of these will focus on Marek Hlasko, with an event entitled “Marek Hlasko: Reviving a Literary Rebel”. Participating will be Polish […]
As noted in the preview of Book World Prague 2014, the 2014 Jiri Theiner Award was given to historian Peter Demetz. Index on Censorship has an article on it though it’s more about the background of the award. (The article was written by Pavel Theiner, the son of the award’s namesake, and he quotes himself […]
“Zsolt Láng experienced a strong allergic reaction to 100% of contemporary Hungarian authors. When any of the papers asked him to write on such and such, he would invariably turn the request down. Last time, however, he agreed to review the latest book of Zsolt Láng, for reasons only known to himself.” From “Cat’s Caramel” […]
“For this was always the dream of the founding fathers, who had imagined the country as a military base from the start, and it was also the dream of those who believed in the existence of the truly nonexistent country, in their Olympic victories, in their paper cars, in their astronaut’s wave. If a country […]
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