Reading Kundera in Central Europe
At Eurozine they reprint a piece by Jonathan Bousfield from New Eastern Europe, Growing up in Kundera's Central Europe, in which he discusses how Milan Kundera's concept of Central Europe (and...
View ArticleGöran Malmqvist profile
In the South China Morning Post Janice Leung invites readers to Meet Göran Malmqvist, Nobel Prize member and champion of Chinese literature -- the Chinese-speaking member of the Swedish...
View ArticleGabriel García Márquez (1927-2014)
The 1982 Nobel laureate, Gabriel García Márquez, has passed away. Only two of his titles are under review at the complete review (I read pretty much all the rest before I started the...
View ArticleIn the Light of What We Know review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Zia Haider Rahman's In the Light of What We Know -- apparently one of this year's 'big' debuts.
View ArticlePeter Buwalda Q & A
This week's Small Talk-column in the Financial Times has a Q & A with Peter Buwalda, whose Bonita Avenue is just out from Pushkin Press; see their publicity page and the Dutch Foundation...
View ArticleTurkish fiction
In Daily Sabah Kaya Genç considers Turkish Masterpieces Unread by the World -- both some available in translation and some that have yet to make it into English. Maureen Freely weighs in...
View ArticleNew Murakami (in Japan)
A new volume of stories by Murakami Haruki is out in Japan, 女のいない男たち; see the 文藝春秋 publicity page. See, for example, The Japan Times report, Murakami's new book hits shelves amid fan...
View Article(Mis)translation into Korean
In The Korean Times Yun Suh-young reports on Lost in translation: New book explores mistranslation in Korean literature. I'd love to see more studies on mistranslation ! Though, of...
View ArticleKunderian unbearability
At Words without Borders Dispatches weblog Sean Cotter considers The Un-X-able Y-ness of Z-ing (Q): A List with Notes, riffing on how (variations on) the famous Kunderian title have taken hold....
View ArticleMaryam's Maze review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Mansoura Ez Eldin's Maryam's Maze. (The review appears just ...2537 days after I received the review copy. Which...
View ArticleHove on 'the day Zimbabwe became independent'
In the Mail & Guardian 'Chenjerai Hove reminisces about what April 18 1980 meant for him', in Free at last: The day Zimbabwe became independent. The obscenity that was Rhodesia is...
View ArticleSinan Antoon Q & A
In the Irish Times Martin Doyle has a Q & A with The Corpse Washer-author Sinan Antoon. Among his responses: What book would you give to a friend's child on their 18th birthday ?...
View ArticleAlistair MacLeod (1936-2014)
Canadian author Alistair MacLeod has passed away; see, for example, Mark Medley's obituary in the National Post. None of his books are under review at the complete review, but I...
View ArticleThe Oxopetra Elegies and West of Sorrow review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of 1979 Nobel laureate Odysseas Elytis' The Oxopetra Elegies and West of Sorrow, just out in a bilingual edition in the Harvard...
View ArticleMein Kampf, in the public domain
Apparently the copyright runs out on Hitler's Mein Kampf at the end of next year, posing something of a problem for the German authorities, who have tried to keep the book out of local...
View ArticleTove Jansson at 100
2014 is quite the centennial year for authors -- Arno Schmidt, William S. Burroughs, Hopscotch-author Julio Cortázar -- and Tove Jansson. Impressively, there's a Tove 100 site, and...
View ArticleLydia Davis reviews
The most recent additions to the complete review are my reviews of two Lydia Davis titles: Her new collection, Can't and Won't A 'Cahiers' from a couple of years ago, Proust, Blanchot and a...
View ArticlePaging Piketty
I got my copy of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century just over a month ago and have been impressed and intrigued by it. I've been meaning to offer review-coverage but, quite...
View ArticleCaine Prize finalists
They've announced the shortlist for the Caine Prize for African Writing, and the shortlisted stories (yes, it's a story prize: "Indicative length is between 3000 and 10,000 words") can be read...
View ArticleCullman Center fellows
The New York Public Library has announced the 2014-2015 Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Fellows -- a sweet deal offering: " a stipend of up to $65,000, an office, a...
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