Doris Lessing (1919-2013)
Doris Lessing, the 2007 Nobel laureate, has passed away; see, for example, Helen T. Verongos' lengthy obituary in The New York Times. There are a lot of tributes already up -- though the...
View ArticleAlfred Hayes reviews
The most recent additions to the complete review are my reviews of two Alfred Hayes novels from the 1950s: In Love My Face for the World to See With novels of his re-issued in the past...
View Article金瓶梅(nia)
I fondly remember working my way through the college library's edition of Clement Egerton's translation, The Golden Lotus, back in the day, the naughty bits all in ... Latin (the challenge !)....
View ArticleAlberto Manguel profile
At Tablet Mark Oppenheimer profiles Alberto Manguel and the Library of Babel at considerable length. Quite a few Manguel titles are under review at the complete review: All Men are Liars...
View ArticleFT&GSBBotY award
They've announced that Brad Stone's Amazon.com-book, The Everything Store has won this year's £30,000 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. (A rare...
View ArticleEnglish PEN translation support
English PEN has announced their latest batch of translation support grants -- English PEN Awards for promotion, given to publishers to help promote specific titles, and the English PEN grants...
View ArticleDhahan International Punjabi Literature Prize
This one is still in the preparation stages, but they've announced the Dhahan International Punjabi Literature Prize, a C$25,000 prize for Punjabi literature. I like the triple-hit of...
View ArticleOrwell's Burmese Days wins Burmese literary award
Yes, Orwell's Burmese Days came out in 1934, but as Kyaw Phyo Tha reports in The Irrawaddy: Nearly eight decades after George Orwell's Burmese Days first hit bookshelves, the book has won the...
View ArticlePremio Cervantes to Elena Poniatowska
They've announced that Elena Poniatowska galardonada con el Premio Cervantes 2013, as the Mexican author has taken the most prestigious Spanish-language author prize (worth €125,000); see also,...
View ArticleThe Creator review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Icelandic author Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir's The Creator.
View ArticleTranslating authors
In the new TLS Carmine Di Biase reviews three Italo Calvino-titles in an interesting overview -- but the observation that really struck me was: Just as enduring was the influence of the...
View ArticleCrossword Book Award shortlists
They've announced the shortlists for the Crossword Book Award, for English-language books in India. One of these is actually under review at the complete review -- The Illicit Happiness of...
View Article(American) National Book Awards
They announced the winners of the 2013 (American) National Book Awards yesterday, with James McBride taking the fiction prize, for The Good Lord Bird (get your copy at Amazon.com or...
View ArticleWriting in ... Lebanon
An interesting piece by Jana El Hassan in the Daily Star, who found herself At home and out of place at the Sharjah International Book Fair (where Lebanon was the guest of honour this year)....
View ArticlePutin and the Russian authors
They had a literary conference in Russia yesterday, and with Vladimir Putin joining in the fun some prominent authors didn't want to play along; as D. Garrison Golubock reported in The Moscow...
View ArticleDSC Prize for South Asian Literature shortlist
They've announced (in ... London, predictably incongruously enough) the six-title-strong shortlist for the 2014 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature The only title under review at the...
View ArticleIn Times of Fading Light review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Eugen Ruge's 2011 German Book Prize-winning (East) German family saga, In Times of Fading Light.
View ArticleKorean literature translation awards
They actually announced the Winners of 44th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards several weeks ago, but only now does The Korean Times follow up with The Judges' Report (2013) -- which...
View Article'International' fiction, in Canada
I have relatively little patience for and interest in the flood of best-books-of-the-year lists that has started, but they're near-unavoidable, and one can't really help coming across them....
View ArticleHay Festival Dhaka reports
The Hay Festival Dhaka ended more than a week ago, but there are still some interesting reports coming out of it -- including on the panel with Eliot Weinberger and Pankaj Mishra that debated:...
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