“When a North American or British writer wants to write about new empires that come out of nowhere brandishing stark and memorable symbols, of vanquished homelands and cities made unrecognizable by war, he or she is likely writing a fantasy or science-fiction book. For a Central European writer they need look no further than their […]
Alex Zucker, translator of Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street, the newly released crime novel by Heda Margolius Kovály, will be appearing this evening Oct 5 at 7pm at the Globe bookstore and cafe for a reading and conversation about the book. Innocence is a thriller set in 1950s Communist Czechoslovakia and was published in […]
The Prague book fair is underway and I had to take refuge from the Friday crowds of schoolchildren in my local café, which, as it turns out, is crowded with slightly older schoolchildren trying to look even older through chain-smoking and midafternoon glasses of wine. Book World Prague 2015’s Guest of Honor is Egypt and […]
The New York Times has an article that uses the occasion and course of the Prague Marathon to venture into Czech dissidence and history as well as some very interesting issues of a renewal of interest in political debate among the younger generation of artists and writers and how this is controversial. The whole article […]
The 25 nominees for the Best Translated Book Award will be whittled down to a shortlist in a few days and with each book getting a pitch for why it should win here is mine on Alex Zucker’s translation of The Devil’s Workshop. “Reading The Devil’s Workshop you come up against a remarkable and frightening […]
The BTBA Fiction Longlist has just been released and, unlike the recently released International Foreign Fiction Prize 2014 longlist*, has some notable work from Central and Eastern Europe on it. First of all, regarding the IFFP list, and I don’t want to sound like Vladimir Putin (though I too have been accused of being both […]
1. The Devil’s Workshop by Jáchym Topol (translated by Alex Zucker) Like my favorite book of the year before, my favorite book of 2013 delves into the ultimate horrors that man inflicts on his fellow man, but does so with a surplus of imagination, suspense and humor. Whereas Selvedin […]
The 2013 Typographical Translation Award has been announced and the winner is The Devil’s Workshop by Jáchym Topol, translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker. That makes two Topol posts in a row here, which by official Literalab rules should disqualify him from being written about for the rest of the year. However, my Best […]
At 2 Paragraphs there is a cool interview series in which international writers respond to a the following Tolstoy quote and follow-up question: “I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries.” Is a similar belief essential in your work? Or are cultural and national distinctions a critical component of […]
From Nov. 14 through Nov. 16 the 10th annual New Literature from Europe festival will take place in New York featuring a number of authors from Central (but not only) Europe. Top of the list is Czech writer of the recently published The Devil’s Workshop, Jáchym Topol (top of the list, in this case, means […]
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