Author of Kafka: the Decisive Years, Reiner Stach, has a great though not exactly heartwarming article in the New Statesman on how The Trial seems to relate to many of today’s wonderful extrajudicial tendencies that are coming from the freedom-loving world and that are keeping us so wonderfully safe and secure: “Death by data: how […]
The 2013 Typographical Translation Award has been announced and the winner is The Devil’s Workshop by Jáchym Topol, translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker. That makes two Topol posts in a row here, which by official Literalab rules should disqualify him from being written about for the rest of the year. However, my Best […]
During my recent trip to Bratislava’s Bibliotéka book fair I was interviewed by the weekly cultural magazine of the daily Pravda. Here is a link to the interview, in Slovak translation naturally. All I can summarize from it is that they give some biographical details that I may or may not have made up (I […]
The inaugural Sofia International Literary Festival is underway in the Bulgarian capital, comprising literary participants from Bulgaria and Balkan countries from December 10 – 15. Among the many writers in attendance are Bulgaria’s Georgi Gospodinov, Kristin Dimitrova, Miroslav Penkov and Milen Ruskov; Serbia’s Vladimir Arsenijević, Macedonia’s Goce Smilevski, Croatia’s Ante Tomić and Romania’s Dan Lungu […]
Tonight, November 23rd, B O D Y hosts a Transatlantic Poetry reading featuring JOSHUA WEINER (US) and EMILY BERRY (UK). The reading will be streamed live over the Transatlantic Poetry site, Facebook and from Google+ event page. The reading begins at 8pm GMT / 3pm EST. This is an innovation in poetry readings, allowing poets […]
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 […]
From November 14 through 17 the Slovak capital of Bratislava will host Bibliotéka, the country’s book fair, featuring an array of Slovak and international writers and publishers such as Michal Hvorecký, Péter Esterházy and Pavel Vilikovský. But the name which has the whole city waiting with bated breath – no, the whole country – is […]
From Nov. 14 through Nov. 16 the 10th annual New Literature from Europe festival will take place in New York featuring a number of authors from Central (but not only) Europe. Top of the list is Czech writer of the recently published The Devil’s Workshop, Jáchym Topol (top of the list, in this case, means […]
It is more than ironic that an author who for years has been speaking out about the dangers of surveillance and the secret state within the state should be denied entry in the “land of the free and home of the brave.” This is from an essay by Bulgarian-German writer Ilija Trojanov titled “Revenge for […]
“For this was always the dream of the founding fathers, who had imagined the country as a military base from the start, and it was also the dream of those who believed in the existence of the truly nonexistent country, in their Olympic victories, in their paper cars, in their astronaut’s wave. If a country […]
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