Mansoura Ez-Eldin Q & A
At Qantara.de Arian Fariborz has a Q & A with Mansoura Ez-Eldin about the literary situation in Egypt these past few years. Ez-Eldin's story, Gothic Night, is available online. I...
View ArticleWriting from ... (North) Korea
Korean writing has been increasingly visible in English in recent years (with lots of help from the LTI Korea), with more titles being published in translation -- especially in Dalkey Archive...
View ArticleGuggenheim fellowships
They've announced the 2014 (US and Canadian) Guggenheim fellows -- 178 of them (from almost 3000 applicants). As always, lots of writers -- and a few translators, notably Susan Bernofsky...
View ArticleHow's the Pain ? review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Pascal Garnier's How's the Pain ?. Gallic Books brought this out in the UK in 2012, and now it's finally also coming to...
View ArticleUp and coming, out of Russia ?
At Russia Beyond the Headlines Phoebe Taplin considers what she terms Future legends of Russian literature at the London Book Fair. A lot of names bandied about, and among the most...
View ArticleKamila Shamsie profile
In The Guardian Natalie Hanman profiles Kamila Shamsie. Of particular interest: She is scathing about what she sees as a lack of rage in the fiction coming out of the world's superpower,...
View ArticleLA Times Book Prize winners
They announced the winners of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes on Friday.
View ArticleOzick on Reiner Stach on Kafka
In The New Republic the great Cynthia Ozick writes on the first two volumes of Reiner Stach's Kafka-biography (the third volume, covering his early years, is apparently nearing completion), in...
View ArticleWriting in ... Norway
Evan Hughes recently published a profile of My Struggle (etc.) author Karl Ove Knausgaard in The New Republic and now follows that up with a wide-eyed report on how wonderful the literary...
View ArticleSvenska Akademiens nordiska pris
The Swedish Academy (the folks that decide who gets the Nobel Prize, among others) announced a month ago that Lars Gustafsson would be getting their Nordic Prize, and the ceremony was held on...
View ArticleWhy I Killed My Best Friend review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Amanda Michalopoulou's Why I Killed My Best Friend, just out from Open Letter. (Oddly, of the last four books I've...
View ArticleNew Swedish Book Review
The 2014:1 Issue of the Swedish Book Review is now available online, including a whole bunch of reviews -- including of the most recent book by The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window...
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Knausgaard coverage
Karl Ove Knausgaard and his multi-volume My Struggle epic (see reviews of volumes one and two, with more to follow) is getting a nice lot of attention. In the US the series is coming out...
View ArticlePulitzer Prizes
They've announced this year's Pulitzer Prizes. The fiction prize went to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which beat out The Son by Philipp Meyer and The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob...
View ArticleBest Translated Book Award shortlist
The shortlist for the Best Translated Book Award (for which I am a judge) has been announced, and the remaining ten titles are: The African Shore by Rodrigo Rey Rosa Blinding by Mircea...
View ArticleDon Bartlett Q & A
At the World Literature Today weblog Sarah Smith has a Q & A with translator (of Knausgaard, among others) Don Bartlett, Translating Norway's Love of Literature.
View ArticleBest Translated Book Awards - poetry finalists
As a judge for the fiction category for the Best Translated Book Awards (and, let's face it, someone whose reading is entirely dominated by fiction (as I noted recently, 91 of the past 100...
View ArticleNew Asymptote
The April issue of Asymptote is now out -- and worth your while, top to bottom. Nevertheless, a few of the highlights: The Artist on her Trapeze: Barbara Wright's 99 Variations on a Theme by...
View Article124 entries for Nigeria Prize for Literature
The closing date for entries for this year's Nigeria Prize for Literature was 31 March, and they've now announced (though not yet at the official site ...) that there were 124 entries; see, for...
View ArticleFiona McCrae Q & A
At Guernica Jonathan Lee has a Q & A with Graywolf Press-publisher Fiona McCrae, The Art of Independent Publishing. She worked at Faber during interesting times, too, and describes...
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