Recently, I spoke with Czech writer Marek Šindelka about his novels Aberrant and Material Fatigue, his graphic novel Sv. Barbora, going from being a poet to a prose writer and a number of other issues. You can read the full article in Apofenie magazine here. To get a copy of Aberrant from Twisted Spoon Press […]
“Milena and I didn’t like dogs. The fierce, powerful creatures in our suburb, Zabjelo, always scared us. We believed they could bite a person to death. But Milena’s death was different. It went roughly like this: …” And so goes the warped twists and turns of Montenegrin writer Ilija Đurović’s short story “Parts of Town“, […]
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. […]
Milan Kundera’s first novel in 13 years, The Festival of Insignificance, will be published in Linda Asher’s English translation next month and the New Yorker has just published an excerpt, though it’s being promoted as a short story, “The Apologizer”. The novel was published in Italy in 2013 and then in France and Spain. Bulgarian […]
If you’re at the London Book Fair today you can attend a discussion this evening on the broader and still broadening scope of contemporary Czech writing with translators Julia Sherwood, Alex Zucker and hosted by editorial director of Words without Borders Susan Harris. Sherwood is the translator of B O D Y’s most recent Saturday […]
Albanian writer Ismail Kadare has been announced as the winner of this year’s Jerusalem Prize, which he will be awarded at the Jerusalem International Book Fair on Feb. 8. The prize is given to writers dealing with the theme of human freedom in society and was inaguarated in 1963 with Bertrand Russell the first winner. […]
Czech writer Magdaléna Platzová is appearing in New York City for the New Literature From Europe festival from Dec. 5 to 6, and for the occasion I have an interview with her in Words Without Borders, where her short story, “This Time Last Year”, ran in last month’s Czech issue in a translation from Czech […]
Hungarian writer and foreign correspondent Sándor Jászberényi has an article (subscriber’s only though I managed to read it free the other day) on the death of a Kurdish Peshmerga fighter he had met and the particular significance of her being a woman. It’s a very powerful story and reminiscent of the writing in his story […]
The latest issue of Words Without Borders is out and is devoted to Contemporary Czech prose. Edited and with an introductory essay by translator Alex Zucker, the issue includes writers who are likely little to totally unknown even to readers keeping up with contemporary European fiction. In his essay Zucker pushes at the political straitjacket […]
The Paris Review has an article on great Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem’s view of the future (and, of course, present) of humanity entitled “The Future According to Stanisław Lem”. The occasion is the screen adaptation of Lem’s 1971 novella The Futurological Congress, translated into English by Michael Kandel, into a film called The Congress […]
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