Throughout August, Literalab will be asking 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. Natasha Perova is the editor of the Russian publishing house Glas, which specializes […]
Today’s Authors & Translators featured translator is the celebrated Marian Schwartz (and her authors – we shouldn’t forget the authors, after all) with a fascinating interview. Among other things, she discusses her soon to be published version of Anna Karenina (August 2014) and the intimacy of being able to work personally with an author, something […]
During Book Expo America in New York there was an interesting discussion on the future of Russian literature, as reported in Russia Beyond The Headlines. Participants included Debut Prize director and author of the novel 2017 Olga Slavnikova, author of Thirst (reviewed on Literalab here) and The Lying Year (currently being read) Andrei Gelasimov and […]
The 4th Slovo Russian Literature Festival is well underway in London. Running from March 5 to 26 the festival celebrates Russian literature old and new, along with the links between the two. This is well illustrated by lectures being given on March 15 by contemporary novelist Dmitry Bykov (Living Souls, 2011) on Boris Pasternak and […]
The ongoing Anxiety series at The New York Times features a contribution from László Krasznahorkai that might be described as a bit beyond anxious. “I’ve been living in complete silence for months, I might say for years …” it starts out, and gets worse (or better) from there. Russian Vampires Russian Life’s Chtenia 21 is […]
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych celebrated the Day of Ukrainian literature and language with a rousing (though admittedly not so well-translated message): “The Ukrainian language is the powerful factor in the consolidated state-building that contributes to the enrichment of the spiritual culture of the society.” Uh, yeah . . my sentiments exactly. The day commemorates 12th […]
At The Moscow Times, John Freedman writes about discovering that the unassuming Moscow apartment building he passed countless times had belonged to Russian/Soviet/Yiddish theater legend Solomon Mikhoels. As Freedman notes, Mikhoels performance of King Lear was his most famous and celebrated role along with that of Tevye the Milkman (best-known worldwide in adaptation in Fiddler […]
“The mist that came from the Mediterranean sea blotted out the city that Pilate so detested. The suspension bridges connecting the temple with the grim fortress of Antonia vanished, the murk descended from the sky and drowned the winged gods above the hippodrome, the crenellated Hasmonaean palace, the bazaars, the caravanserai, the alleyways, the pools […]
Literary roundup: Pre-war Warsaw and Russian dystopias The first English translation of a book by Polish-Jewish author Józef Hen will be published later this month, according to the Polish Book Institute’s website. Nowolipie Street is a 1991 memoir of growing up in the lost world of Jewish Warsaw in the 1920s and 30s, up until […]
The term “New Russians” used to refer to gaudily-dressed, designer-label loving, luxury-car driving, loud-talking Russians who struck it rich after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But now there’s another kind of New Russian touring the US at the moment. Five new Russian writers are on a tour of the East Coast, sponsored in part […]
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