(African) literary prize debate
In The Herald (Zimbabwe) Beaven Tapureta takes on the Caine Prize -- the leading (no doubt about that, for the time being) African short-story prize -- and literary prizes as a way of fostering...
View ArticleSimin Behbahani (1927-2014)
I last mentioned leading Iranian poet Simin Behbahani less than a year ago, on the occasion of her being awarded the Janus Pannonius Poetry Prize. Now she has passed away -- see, for eample,...
View ArticlePEN/Heim Translation Fund grants
They've announced the 2014 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant winners: From a field of 120 applicants, the Fund's Advisory Board -- Esther Allen, Barbara Epler, Sara Khalili, Michael F. Moore,...
View ArticleGeek Sublime review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Vikram Chandra's Geek Sublime, due out shortly in the US from Graywolf (after being published in the UK and India earlier this...
View ArticleTeaching translation
At Words without Borders' Dispatches weblog Margaret Litvin offers a look Between Love and Justice: Teaching Literary Translation at Boston University.
View ArticleRashid al-Din in Edinburgh
A neat-looking exhibit at the Edinburgh University Library: The World History of Rashid al-Din, 1314. A Masterpiece of Islamic Painting; see now also Si Hawkins piece in The National on it,...
View ArticleLa Mamounia Literary Award finalists
Marrakesh hotel La Mamounia have an annual literary prize (well, what fine international hotel wouldn't ?) and, as Morocco World News now report, La Mamounia Literary Award Nominates 8...
View ArticleRussia-born writers in America
At Russia Beyond the Headlines Diana Bruk considers A long-distance romance: Russia-born writers in the U.S.
View ArticleThe Zone of Interest interest
There's a new Martin Amis out -- in the UK; US reader will have to wait another five weeks or so -- and it was apparently 'embargoed' in the UK until publication-time (meaning: no reviews...
View ArticleI Called Him Necktie review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Austrian-Japanese author Milena Michiko Flašar's I Called Him Necktie, coming out soon from New Vessel Press.
View ArticleWriting in ... Brazil
At PEN Atlas Paulo Scott writes on Identity and durability, arguing: The period of recent Brazilian democratisation (...), has so far failed to produce an even moderately impressive number of...
View ArticleU.R.Ananthamurthy (1932-2014)
U.R.Ananthamurthy (Udupi Rajagopalacharya Ananthmurthy), one of India's leading writers, has passed away. Lots of Indian media coverage about this, of course (see, for example, Shiv...
View ArticleLiterature in translation in ... the UK
In The Observer Dalya Alberge reports that British readers lost in translations as foreign literature sales boom. Sounds good -- boom ! -- but I'd be more convinced if more of the...
View ArticlePrize: Premio Nacional de Literatura de Chile
They've announced the 2014 winner of the biennial Premio Nacional de Literatura de Chile -- the Chilean national literary award -- and it goes to Antonio Skármeta; see, for example, Writer...
View ArticlePrizes: James Tait Black Prizes
They've announced the winners of this year's £10,000 James Tait Black Prizes (Britain's oldest literary prizes, as they like to remind you), the prizes going to Harvest, by Jim Crace (fiction...
View ArticleWittgenstein Jr review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Lars Iyer's new novel, Wittgenstein Jr, coming out from Melville House.
View ArticleLooking for anti-capitalist polemics in Africa
In Will the pro-poor writers please stand up in The Herald (Zimbabwe) Stanely Mushava argues: With the elites preoccupied with petty cross-aggrandisement, writers must step up the podium on...
View ArticleTranslating Dostoevsky
In Dostoevsky's cacophonic catastrophes, at Russia Beyond the Headlines, Georgy Manaev profiles Oliver Ready, translator of (yet another) English version -- "five years in the making" -- of...
View ArticleOn Not Out of Hate
In The Myanmar Times Whitney Light suggests, in Classic anti-romance of colonial Burma condemns good intentions: After Orwell's Burmese Days, a foreigner's next obligatory Burma fiction read...
View ArticleMFA, Dubai style ?
Gulf News suggests: With the addition of the Dubai Programme for Writing, the imminence of a rich yield from the Emirati literary soil has just announced itself. Well, when they put it...
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