South Asian translations (not) in the US, cont'd
At the Asymptote blog Mahmud Rahman continues his examination, 'On the Dearth of South Asian Translations in the U.S.' with a third instalment, focusing on the lack of institutional support for...
View ArticleBhima review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Malayalam-writing M.T. Vasudevan Nair's Mahabharata-variation, Bhima. Glad to see a translation-from-the-Malayalam (hard...
View Article(Not) reading in ... Pakistan
Muzaffar Mukhtar reports in The Express Tribune that there's been a Slump in sales: Booksellers going out of business -- an article that could be written about most any place right now but, in...
View ArticleJonathan Franzen Q&A with Daniel Kehlmann
Jonathan Franzen tries to give his buddy Daniel Kehlmann a helping hand, now that Kehlmann's new novel, F is out (without, so far, having made much of an impression, it would seem) by engaging...
View ArticleFirst Soviet Writers' Congress anniversary
At Russia Beyond the Headlines (which continues to offer a variety of fun literary coverage -- you do have it bookmarked, don't you ?) Anastasia Gorbatova reminds of When literature came under...
View ArticleLessing's books to Harare
As New Zimbabwe reports, Lessing donated entire book collection to Harare, as Nobel laureate Doris Lessing: bequeathed her entire personal collection of over 3,000 books to the Harare City...
View ArticleSheridan Le Fanu at 200
It's the bicentenary of Sheridan Le Fanu's birth, and it's nice to see some coverage -- though one wonders how much is occasioned by the (validation ?) that, as for example The Guardian...
View ArticleRamuz revival ?
At English PEN, Michelle Bailat-Jones writes about Charles Ferdinand Ramuz -- trying to sell him as a: "contemporary of Robert Walser" (because that's relevant to .. anything) and how he: "is...
View ArticleAmis, not in Germany
An Interesting Q & A (in German) with Martin Amis in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung -- summed up by Philip Oltermann and Anne Penketh in The Guardian, in Martin Amis's holocaust...
View ArticlePublishing in ... Spain
There have been bad numbers from all over, over the past few years, but few as dismal as this: at The Bookseller Benedicte Page reports that Spain's domestic market sees 12% drop in 2013....
View ArticleCharacter description
A little while ago I flailed about on how I don't much care for/need/get much out of descriptions of characters in fiction; now I find, in Szentkuthy's Towards the One and Only Metaphor (which...
View ArticleTowards the One and Only Metaphor review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Szentkuthy Miklós' Towards the One and Only Metaphor, the second of his works to be brought out in English by Contra Mundum...
View ArticleRead Russia finalists
The Read Russia Prize for translations of Russian works into (selected) foreign languages will be announced 6 September, and at Russia Beyond the Headlines they have all the information and the...
View ArticleOn Machado
At the Times Literary Supplement site Peter Robb's piece on the truly Magnificent Machado -- Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis -- is now freely available. It's a review of two recently...
View ArticleBooks in translation in ... Canada
Last week I mentioned/discussed Dalya Alberge's report in The Observer on how (supposedly) British readers lost in translations as foreign literature sales boom, and at Quill & Quire they...
View ArticleDavid Mitchell profile
In The Japan Times Andrew Lee looks (sigh ...) Inside author David Mitchell's metaphysical mind, as The Bone Clocks-author talks about his new novel and his Japanese influences. I...
View ArticleOur Lady of the Nile review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Rwandan-French author Scholastique Mukasonga's prix Renaudot-winning (2012) novel, Our Lady of the Nile, now available in English...
View ArticleIan McEwan profile
In The Observer Robert McCrum profiles, at some length Ian McEwan: 'I'm only 66 -- my notebook is still full of ideas' -- mainly, of course, about his new work, The Children Act. Quite a...
View ArticleSeptember online issues
Among the publications with September issues now available, in part or whole, online are: The September issue of Words without Borders, with a focus on 'Writing Exile', and bonus coverage of...
View ArticleSamuel Johnson Prize longlist
They've announced the longlist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction -- though, last I checked, they hadn't managed to do that at the official site, because ... well ... who knows ? But...
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