On Sept 29 there will be a panel presenting and discussing two works of Slovak fiction that besides being outstanding writing are unfortunately very timely. The Last Thing by Leopold Lahola and The Hours and The Minutes by Alfonz Bednár translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood and David Short respectively, are both collections of short […]
“When I’m at the zoo, apart from looking for Molnár and watching the animals, I observe human couples with their young. A mother with a leopard tattooed on her shoulder who moves like a stork. A cub of a human wanting to borrow a ball from a chimpanzee in the cage. A grandma with her […]
This Sunday at 1pm I will be moderating a panel on Slovak literature at Prague Book World featuring Julia Sherwood, Rajendra Chitnis, Ivana Taranenková and Peter Darovec. We’ll be discussing Karolinum’s two latest Slovak novels among a variety of topics. I hope to see you there. More info here
The 2022 Winter Issue of B O D Y nears its end with my review of My Seven Lives by Agneša Kalinová and Jana Juráňová, translated from the Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood. The book is an interview memoir that covers Kalinová’s eventful life and is a fascinating reflection of 20th century history in […]
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 […]
Recently, I spoke with Czech writer Marek Šindelka about his novels Aberrant and Material Fatigue, his graphic novel Sv. Barbora, going from being a poet to a prose writer and a number of other issues. You can read the full article in Apofenie magazine here. To get a copy of Aberrant from Twisted Spoon Press […]
The Calvert Journal has compiled a list of 100 books to read from Eastern Europe (also Central Europe) and Central Asia. It’s a fascinating list put together by a wide range of writers, translators, academics coming from a number of different countries and languages besides English. The list includes a number of books and writers […]
The most recent episode of Julia Sherwood’s excellent podcast series on Slovak literature in English is me. I talk about the pros and cons of a virus-emptied center of Prague, the Central European literary sensibility and why I like it and especially about some of the Slovak writers I’ve read, written about and published in […]
Slovak writer Pavel Vilikovský died Monday at 78. He was one of Slovakia’s most prominent contemporary writers and his profile in English was getting a lift with the recent translation of his novel Fleeting Snow. Previously, his Ever Green Is …: Collected Prose, translated by Charles Sabatos, was his only available work in English from […]
“The collection’s cast of characters includes, among others, a child-like dwarf creature who needs to be kept away from water and serves as a litmus paper in the human world, an ex-stripper ceaselessly emitting cigar smoke in emulation of her act of long ago and an old woman whose devoted tending of the apricot tree […]
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