The German-language literature festival, the Festival Neue Literatur, is taking place in New York City from Feb 19 – 22 with six writers from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland and a theme of Love and Money. Among the featured authors you can see Swiss writer Jonas Lüscher, whose novel Barbarian Spring in an English translation by […]
“The stout man looked at Israel for the first time since he’d walked into the restaurant. He placed his glass on the table and said, ‘You should go away. You aren’t suited for this country and you don’t like it. Dov loves it. Too bad he’ll come to such a stupid end.’ He gazed into […]
Russian Literature Week begins on Monday Dec. 1 in NYC, consisting of live and online events celebrating the translation of contemporary and classic Russian writing. There will be panel discussions, roundtables and readings with leading writers, translators and publishers as well as film screenings focusing on writers from Pushkin to Prilepin. Many of the participants […]
On June 13 the British Library is holding a seminar entitled “Balkan Day” with an absolutely fantastic lineup of Balkan writers that includes Dubravka Ugrešić, Vladislav Bajac, Igor Štiks, Andrej Nikolaidis, Muharem Bazdulj, Dragan Kujundžić, Christina Pribicevic-Zoric and Alex Drace-Francis. There will also be an event with Rosie Goldsmith “Balkanisation: the pick of recent Balkan […]
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 […]
I have been expressing my admiration for Central European crime writing since I was practically a baby, but being a baby no one understood what I was saying, so it took until I started Literalab and began writing about it that my admiration took on intelligible form. Since then I have surveyed regional crime fiction […]
At World Literature Today translator and publisher Ross Ufberg talks about translating Vladimir Lorchenkov’s The Good Life Elsewhere, translation in general and the newly established New Vessel Press. The interview is full of interesting and fairly optimistic takes on publishing literature in translation: “… I have read lots of Russian novels in my life and […]
There is a some environmental and personal catastrophe in Kazakhstan and a story in interwar Central Europe ending in a journey to the concentration camps. Then a very different journey from Moldova pointing towards the promised land of Italy, some Ottoman intrigue and conversations with Orhan Pamuk, and three works by Chekhov. […]
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 […]
“It doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as Italy,” he categorically declared as he made his rounds. He’d dramatically smack his trowel against the clay, keeping rhythm with his own argument. “The whole thing was invented by international swindlers!” “What do you mean?” the educated folks would ask in surprise. “Italy’s right there on the […]
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