“This isn’t the placelessness of a fellow modernist writer like Kafka, but more closely resembles that of a hyperrealistic painting, where the attention to detail – the glint of light on a bottle, the folds of skin on the figure’s neck – obscure any sign of the surroundings. Felsen isn’t looking at the world through […]
Translated from the Russian by Mariya Gusev #end_of_the_world_diary I teach at a literary seminar. A colleague wrote that a student had just given her a story where a rocket hits a TV tower. And a student gave me a story where two people were fleeing a nuclear explosion that had engulfed Moscow. I envy those […]
Translated from the Russian by Mariya Gusev Throughout this week, which will close out the first month of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Literalab will publish the writing of Natalia Klyuchareva. “The End of the World Diary” recounts her reactions during the war’s opening week. “March 6” tells about her experience attending an anti-war rally. […]
As B O D Y’s Winter Issue continues, we bring you an interview with British writer Alan Bilton speaking about his latest novel The End of the Yellow House, the influence of Russian literature and much more. It’s a truly fantastic novel that offers a vivid, deep and darkly surreal look at the chaotic and […]
In the opening week of B O D Y’s Spring Issue we hit you with a double dose of Russian writer Andrey Filimonov. First, there’s an exclusive excerpt of the translation from his novel Retsepty sotvoreniya mira (World Creation Recipes), a book that delves into Russia and the writer’s family’s convoluted 20th century with some hallucinogenic […]
Books From Slovakia has a fantastic interview Daniela Balážová held with Slovak writer Pavol Rankov, author of the recently translated It Happened on the First of September. Among many topics Rankov talks about how the different translations deal with all the different languages used in the novel (spoiler: differently) and also talks about the lost multicultural […]
Translator Alex Cigale has spent years working on bringing the “lyrical excesses” of Anatoly Mariengof’s Russian prose from his 1928 novella Cynics into English. In the latest Saturday European Fiction in B O D Y he offered up a sample of some of Mariengof’s shorter prose in “Aphorisms, Anecdotes, And Other Literary Trifles” and now […]
“Of all things, I am most likely an epicurean. ‘Death has no bearing on us,’ Epicurus had said, “For when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we no longer exist.” And that is, roughly speaking, also my attitude toward ‘non-existence’ (to use the euphemistic philosophical term). But, when […]
“And so, it once happened that Nikolay Ivanovich found himself in Hotel Europe, in their restaurant. Nikolay Ivanovich sits at his table, and the table over from him is occupied by some foreigners, and they’re gobbling up apples. And that’s when Nikolay Ivanovich said to himself: ‘A curious thing,’ Nikolay Ivanovich said to himself, […]
The 6th annual Slovo Russian Literature Festival is underway in London, because with only the book fair going on there is a painful shortage of literary events in the British capital at the moment. The festival was opened by Boris Akunin, who will also be speaking this evening. Two other authors known for their novels […]
literalab 