The New York Times has an article that uses the occasion and course of the Prague Marathon to venture into Czech dissidence and history as well as some very interesting issues of a renewal of interest in political debate among the younger generation of artists and writers and how this is controversial. The whole article […]
A Russian military invasion has been at the top of the headlines, and with the publication of the opening chapter of Zakhar Prilepin’s novel Sankya in B O D Y last weekend, it’s timely to point to an excellent article by Phoebe Taplin in Russia Beyond The Headlines (RBTH) on the long Russian literary tradition […]
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 […]
It’s Dostoevsky’s birthday today! Were he still alive, he would be eight years short of 200. It’s just as well that he isn’t though because like Solzhenitsyn in his cranky old age he would likely have a cable TV show that no one watches in which he ranted and raved against everything and everyone, except […]
Manuscripts don’t burn, but they can sure be kept locked away a long time. In February 1961, KGB agents came to Vasily Grossman’s apartment and confiscated the typescript, manuscript and virtually everything connected to the novel Life and Fate completed the previous year. Now, 52 years later and a mere 20 or so years after […]
Antonia Lloyd-Jones has been awarded the 2012 Found in Translation Award, the best Polish translator award funded by the Polish Book Institute. The award, which until now was given for a single book translated from Polish, was instead awarded to Lloyd-Jones for “the entirety of her output from the previous year”. And an impressive output […]
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 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 […]
It’s the end of the world and at Russia Beyond the Headlines (RBTH) they ask a sample of Russian writers such as German Sadulaev, Dmitry Bykov, Zakhar Prilepin and even Russian-American Gary Shteyngart about how they would spend their last day of human existence knowing the Mayans were right. The answers are interesting and unfortunately […]
“Insallah,” he said, and took a long drag. “If NATO gives the green light, then we attack.” “Twins,” a story of the Libyan uprising from Hungarian writer and war correspondent Sándor Jászberényi is featured on Pilvax Magazine. And so yet another Central European writer has devoted his attention to the Arab/Islamic world without a peep […]
literalab 