Meursault, Counter-Investigation (coming) in English
Other Press will be publishing the US edition of Kamel Daoud's much-discussed and prize-winning variation on Camus, Meursault, contre-enquête, and at Publishers Weekly publisher Judith Gurewich...
View ArticleLiterary money in Piketty's Capital
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century -- see the Harvard University Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk -- is surely one of, if not the book of...
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Modiano picks up Nobel Prize
They held the fancy Nobel ceremonies yesterday, and everybody got to pick up their medals and diplomas and shake the royal hand and so on. All very fancy and slightly ridiculous -- white tie...
View ArticleSelf-Portrait in Green review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Marie NDiaye's Self-Portrait in Green, recently published by Two Lines Press.
View ArticleMan Booker Prize judges
Yes, 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction: Judges announced, and they are: Ellah Allfrey, John Burnside, Sam Leith, and Frances Osborne, with Michael Wood as chair. Interesting (?) side...
View ArticleTranslation recommendations
Among the endless best of year and the like lists, the more specialized ones tend to be both more interesting and useful -- and at PEN Atlas they get translation recommendations from a variety...
View ArticleNaguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature
They've announced that Sudanese author Hammour Ziada awarded the 2014 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature -- though, of course, since this is (supposed to be ...) a book prize, it is, in fact,...
View ArticleJames Patterson profile
He's incredibly -- and somewhat bafflingly -- popular, and in Vanity Fair Todd S. Purdum profiles The Henry Ford of Books. An interesting background and path -- and apparently: "success...
View ArticleEarly Chekhov
At Russia Beyond the Headlines George Butchard reports on efforts at Bringing early Chekhov to an English-speaking readership as apparently -- and somewhat surprisingly -- a great deal of early...
View ArticleThe nefarious 'international literature lobby'
In The Guardian Alison Flood reports that Turkish novelists Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak accused of being Western stooges by pro-government press, as: Major Turkish authors Orhan Pamuk and Elif...
View ArticleBooks review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Charlie Hill's entertaining killer-novel novel, Books.
View ArticleNaudé-Vladislavić exchange
At Granta they print an interesting exchange, In Conversation: S.J. Naudé and Ivan Vladislavić, the two writers discussing 'translation, divided cityscapes and the electric current in writing'....
View ArticleTurning to Finnish translation
At Books from Finland they wondered how people whose mother tongue isn't Finnish became interested enough in the (difficult and not exactly widely-spoken) language to become translators of...
View ArticleWorst book lists
What with all the best-of-the-year book lists coming out I'm kind of disappointed that there aren't more worst-of lists to be found, a reminder of the year's over-hyped crap and flops and...
View ArticleThe Black Signs review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Lars Mørch Finborud's The Black Signs, an intriguing offering from the Norwegian from the intriguing Broken Dimanche Press.
View ArticleModiano in English
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have apparently announced (though not yet at their 'media center', last I checked ...) that they'll be publishing the English translation of Nobel laureate Patrick...
View ArticleFolio Prize nominations
They've announced the eighty titles that will be considered for the Man Booker (II) Prize, a.k.a the 'Folio Prize': These are the 80 works of fiction published in the UK in 2014 that, in the...
View ArticleDecline of literary culture - regional report: Agra
The oft-repeated story, from every corner of the world: today's installment, from Ishita Mishra in the Times of India: Agra's literary landscape dying a slow death. You know the...
View ArticleMāori Book Awards
A couple of days ago they announced the Ngā Kupu Ora Aotearoa Māori Book Awards. Great to see the support for Māori writing (and hopefully it will translate, at least a bit, abroad as...
View ArticleBooks in translation, 2014
Kaija Straumanis puts together a nice list at Three Percent of 50/50: Fifty Books in Translation from Fifty Presses [Our 2014 Year-End Book List], showing just how many varied publishers are...
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