The newly established Czech Book Award (Cena Česká kniha) has announced its shortlist of 20 titles out of 109 titles submitted by Czech publishers. A list of seven finalists will come out in April and the winner will be announced as part of Book World Prague on May 19. Shortlisted authors that can be read […]
An article on Aleksandar Hemon and Nicole Krauss presenting Dalkey’s Best European Fiction 2012, on the good old translation conundrum, on old men no longer reading fiction (from a very good source) and another kind of cut in the publishing industry besides job cuts. Read the full article at Czech Position
The latest issue of the University of California at San Diego’s literature in translation magazine Alchemy includes Slovak actor/singer/writer Július Satinský’s Dostoevsky’s Letter translated by Magdalena Mullek. If you haven’t already been tempted to read it then a look at the story’s byline should more than convince you: “A letter from Fyodor Mikhailovich, of Great […]
“There is one kind of literature which never reaches the voracious masses. The work of creative writers, written out of the author’s real necessity, and for his own benefit. The awareness of a supreme egoism, wherein laws become significant. * Every page should explode, either because of its profound gravity, or its vortex, vertigo, newness, […]
In Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulić has a far-reaching exploration of European identity by looking at two very different forms of change taking place in Italy. On the one hand, there is the influx of refugee immigrants coming to the island of Lampedusa and the southern coastal city of Bari. It is a story of incredible privations […]
Translations shouldn’t be treated as “literary broccoli” or “armchair travel” and doing so is counterproductive. An article on some of the longstanding myths attached to literature in translation. Read the full article at Publishing Perspectives Photo – Ryūkō eigo zukushi (fashionable melange of English words), woodcut by Tsunajima Kamekichi showing illustrated sampler of foreign everyday […]
“To your mad world—one answer: I refuse.” – from new translations by Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine of Marina Tsvetaeva’s “Poems to Czechoslovakia.” The latest issue of Poetry magazine features a number of selections of the work of Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva. I will soon be writing something about Tsvetaeva’s brief but impactful time living […]
Tim Parks has an interesting and provocative blog post at NYRB on whether or not it’s necessary to finish good books. It’s obvious, of course, that he is going to suggest that leaving books unfinished is okay, otherwise he would never have written the piece in the first place (“And to conclude, I declare it […]
The Budapest Times has an article comparing the number of statues erected to notable figures with the idea that it will reveal something of “the intellectual and spiritual state of a nation.” Looking at the number of statues of writers put up since 1989 offers an interesting contrast: Albert Wass (writer): 49 Sándor Márai (writer): […]
The New York Times has an article on the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s putting its archives online. The organization, which is known as “the Joint” (except perhaps among old-school gangsters) will be making its massive archives of photographs (100,000) and information (containing 500,000 names) available with a searchable index. The Times has a slideshow […]
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