You cannot make this stuff up. It requires multiple Kafka organizations, Kazakh embassy press services and lazy, incompetent journalists to create the right effect. Less than a month ago I wrote about the shadowy European “Franz Kafka” Circle Prague, which seems to award its Franz Kafka Medal just before the internationally renowned Franz Kafka Society […]
The first part of an essay by book jacket designer Peter Mendelsund on his blog Jacket Mechanical covering just what it is his job involves. And he starts with a bang, as it were, questioning some of cover designs for Nabokov’s Lolita because: “It is easy to forget, especially easy given the soft-core Lolita renderings […]
The Conrad Festival is underway in Krakow as the Polish city celebrates the literary heritage of the English novelist born as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. Among the Polish and international guests at the festival are Michel Houellebecq*, Andrzej Stasiuk, Roberto Calasso, Alberto Manguel, David Grossman, Eva Hoffman and Jacek Dehnel. The festival was opened by […]
Romanian novelist and journalist Gabriela Adameşteanu’s best known novel Wasted Mornings (Dimineata pierduta) was a huge critical and commercial success when it was first published in Romania in 1984 and numerous translations followed. The English translation by Patrick Camiller was published this year by Northwestern University Press and on November 3 Adameşteanu will be appearing […]
Eastern Europe has made its way into a lot of recently published magazine issues. First of all there is Timothy Snyder’s fantastic article in the NYRB on Galicia (requires subscription) “A Core of European Tragedy, Diversity, Fantasy,” in which figures as diverse as Emperor Joseph II, Stanisław Przybyszewski, son of the composer Franz Xaver Mozart, […]
A preview of Komiksfest 2011 on Czech Position. The festival features guests such as Pascal Rabaté, Dave McKean, Anke Feuchtenberger, Konstantin Komardin, Dario Adanti and Paco Roca. Hopefully, I will have some interviews up next week. Read the full article here … Photos – 1) From Ibicus by Pascal Rabaté, 2) Black Holes by Dave McKean, […]
Parallel Stories by Péter Nádas is being published in the US on October 26. The 1,152 page novel took the Hungarian writer 18 years to complete, which is one the reasons it is being “hailed” as a “once-in-a-generation literary event.” Considering the recent New York Times lament that so many top American novelists like Jeffrey […]
Twisted Spoon Press has announced the release of Ladislav Klíma’s novella Glorious Nemesis. The publisher describes the book as “a balladic ghost story that explores the metaphysics of love and death, crime and reincarnation,” set in the mountainous Tyrol. The novella was translated from the Czech by Marek Tomin. Twisted Spoon previously published Klíma’s novel […]
Earlier this year Vasyl Shklyar refused the Shevchenko Prize and the $32,000 in prize money as a protest against what he considers the anti-Ukrainian policies of current Minister of Education Dmytro Tabachnyk. In an essay I linked to previously novelist Andrey Kurkov referred to Black Raven as “a rare literary scandal,” for being nominated for […]
Today in Literature informs us that it was this day in 1896 that saw the premiere of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull in St. Petersburg. The opening bombed, in a large part because the audience came expecting a conventional farce rather than the type of wordy drama that Chekhov has become famous for. Although driven backstage […]
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