The Vegetarian by Han Kang has awarded the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. The novel was translated into English by Deborah Smith and published by Portobello Books. The author and translator are each awarded a prize of £25,000 as well as a trophy. If you haven’t read this novel yet you absolutely should. It’s amazing. […]
This evening in London, Brazilian author of the novel Nowhere People, Paulo Scott, will be appearing at the London Review Bookshop. Published by And Other Stories, the book was translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn and is described on the event host’s site as presenting “the stark contrast between the world of the rich, […]
A lot of early 20th century Moscow, Paris (through Russian eyes) and Berlin this week, though also some interstellar travel, 21st century Berlin and more. Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov After being saved from a suicide attempt by the appearance of a literary editor, the journalist and failed novelist Sergei Maxudov has a book suddenly […]
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 […]
One of the locus points of Russian satirical writing after the turn of the 20th century was a magazine titled Сатирикон – transliterated variously as Satirikon, Satiricon and Satirycon. It was published in St. Petersburg from 1908 to 1914, with a spinoff New Satirikon running from 1913 to 1918. Along with satirist Arkady Averchenko, the […]
“Look at this be-me-ne,” he’d say unfurling a hand-woven striped headscarf, “The El-Dzhamans of Baghdad wore them on their heads. The old El-Dzhaman — by the way, he let me have it for a sky-high price — told me that it once belonged to Queen Be-me-ne from the clan of El-Dzhamans. She strangled her husband […]
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