The shortlist for the Rossica Translation Prize 2014 has been announced for the best translation from Russian and it’s a pitched battle between five books. Interestingly, only one of the books’ authors is still alive, as one was quite famously killed in a duel (and that in 1837, so he wouldn’t be showing up at […]
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 […]
The Missing Slate has published an excerpt from the fantastic novel Samko Tále’s Cemetery Book by Slovak writer Daniela Kapitáňová and translated by Julia Sherwood. The book was published in the UK by Garnett Press in 2011 but has yet to find a US publisher. First published in Slovakia in 2000 to great success the […]
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 […]
“Zsolt Láng experienced a strong allergic reaction to 100% of contemporary Hungarian authors. When any of the papers asked him to write on such and such, he would invariably turn the request down. Last time, however, he agreed to review the latest book of Zsolt Láng, for reasons only known to himself.” From “Cat’s Caramel” […]
“While the gypsy woman held a garment in the air, offering it to the pineapple vendor, her teat slid from the mouth of her child, who squealed in hunger. The gypsy shoved her nipple, stiff and dripping milk, back between her child’s lips, his mouth filthy and his eyes sealed shut with pus.” From Josef […]
“when dad came out he had to push his way through a raging crowd of invalids everyone with a limp except me later he showed me some monuments but to me Warsaw was a city of people missing limbs” From “Warsaw”, one of four poems by Polish poet Piotr Macierzynski published in B O D […]
Author of Maidenhair and the just released The Light and the Dark, Mikhail Shishkin, wrote an article for English PEN on the Potemkin village of the Winter Olympics, now underway in Sochi at the cost of a mere $50 billion, a sum we can all agree is well worth it for a few weeks of […]
Tonight at 8 PM GMT / 9 PM CET / 3 PM EST / Noon PST, Christopher Crawford and Anthony Madrid will read and answer your questions during a live-streamed online reading at Transatlantic Poetry. Transatlantic Poetry Readings allow poets and audiences worldwide to come together in one virtual location. B O D Y […]
Natasha Perova, editor of Glas New Russian Writing, has a very interesting piece in PEN America on the Russian literary scene in which she discusses the young generation of writers (some of which Glas publishes due to their association with the Debut Prize) and what differentiates them from the writers of the Russian and Soviet […]
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