From the time I read “The Sorrows of Idiot Augustus” in Best European Fiction 2012 by Janusz Rudnicki, translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft, I was on the lookout for anything by this fantastic writer that would breakthrough the sea of mediocrity of what gets published in English-language fiction. This turned out to be […]
Polish writer and journalist Jacek Hugo-Bader will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on March 28 to recount “his journey through one of the remotest and baddest parts of Russia” in an event titled “Kolyma Diaries: A Journey into Russia’s Haunted Hinterland”: Hugo-Bader travelled the 2,000km Kolyma highway hearing the tales of those who […]
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 […]
Agnieszka Taborska’s novel Niedokończone życie Phoebe Hicks (The Unfinished Life of Phoebe Hicks) was published in Poland in 2013. Selected excerpts of the completed translation by Ursula Phillips were published in Saturday European Fiction in B O D Y. In extracts from Polish reviews of the novel translated by Julia Sherwood you can read about […]
“When Phoebe Hicks conducted her first séance, when she became the first medium in New England, when her fame began to entice other women to embark on a similar career, no one foresaw, of course, what would distinguish her from her successors. This difference, not so crucial at first glance, fundamentally influenced Phoebe’s story.” From […]
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 […]
“‘Istanbul is an incredible city,’ he said. ‘Here you’ll find the sort of people who’ll share their last crust of bread with you, as well as the sort who’ll cut out your kidneys and dump you in the canal.’ He was looking for the first kind;” From “The Assassin from Apricot City” by Witold Szabłowski, […]
Witold Szabłowski’s The Assassin from Apricot City: Reportage from Turkey, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones is about to be released by Stork Press, and in the run up to publication there will be a book launch tonight, November 21, at London’s Free Word Centre. Both the author and translator will be there, as […]
“On Thursday, as always, I was awakened by the radio. Listening to the news while brushing my teeth— I have a radio right in my bathroom— I heard about the flood in the state of Pueblo, Mexico in which two thousand people had drowned. Now, I don’t know if that was the first time this […]
“This was a symphony inside the sea, yes, inside the sea, for only now did I realize that we had, in fact, come to the seaside, complete with waves and the wind, that everything around was music and that somewhere in the distance a man was swimming, swimming in the waves and in the music, […]
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