One might be tempted to think that literature commonly characterized as absurdist or nihilist would not get much official attention in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Still less would anyone think that it could serve as a springboard to reaching the rarefied heights of literary prizes. Yet, as absurd and potentially nihilistic as it sounds, […]
In a bid to obtain the status of a “UNESCO Creative City of Literature,” Prague’s Municipal Library has put a literary map of the city online that locates both Czech and international writers in various parts of the city. At the moment the map is only in Czech (which I would think might hinder their […]
Polish quarterly magazine Res Publica Nowa has published a special English-language issue “Central Europe as City.” Besides the editorials, there are five articles from the issue available online on the Eurozine website and they contain some fascinating information. Articles cover an array of topics – from the multicultural history of today’s Bratislava to the Jews […]
“A curious novel, Kafka’s Amerika: indeed, why should this young twenty-nine-year-old writer have laid his first novel in a continent where he had never set foot? This choice shows a clear intent: to not do realism; better yet: to not do a serious work. He did not even try to palliate his ignorance by research; […]
“The greatest literary figures of Central Europe in the twentieth century (Kafka, Musil, Broch, Gombrowicz, but Freud as well) rebelled (they were very much alone in that rebellion) against the legacy of the preceding century, which in their part of Europe bowed under the particularly heavy weight of Romanticism. They felt that in its vulgar […]
On March 24, 2011 Czech-born French writer Milan Kundera will become just the twelfth writer to have his collected works published in the prestigious Bibliothèque de La Pléiade edition during his lifetime. Published by Gallimard, the initial volume will include Kundera’s novels originally written in Czech, which form the bulk of his work. Having left […]
Central European literary life A recurring obstacle to writing about Central European literature is the fact that it apparently doesn’t exist. As recently as this year, when Penguin UK brought out its series of Central European Classics, British novelist Adam Thirlwell began his overview of the collection by writing “I can put it like this. […]
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