Günter Grass (1927-2015)
1999 Nobel laureate Günter Grass has passed away; see, for example obituaries in The New York Times and The Guardian. As one of the authors whose work I had read long before I started...
View ArticleHoda Barakat Q & A
In the Daily Star India Stoughton has a Q & A with Man Booker International Prize-finalist Hoda Barakat (a prize she was apparently unfamiliar with until she was named a finalist ...).
View ArticleEuropean Union Prize for Literature
They've announced the winners of the European Union Prize for Literature (which should surely be the European Union Prizes for Literature, given that they hand these out a dozen or so at a...
View ArticleInternational IMPAC Dublin Literary Award shortlist
They've announced the shortlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award -- at ten titles still quite long, but certainly more manageable than the 142 titles they started out with....
View ArticleThe Dead Mountaineer's Inn review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of One More Last Rite for the Detective Genre by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, The Dead Mountaineer's Inn, available in English...
View ArticleAgenting translations
At Publishing Perspectives Tara Tober has a Q & A with Laurence Laluyaux on agenting translated fiction.
View Article'Books from Taiwan'-site
I'm not sure how useful national literary sites are in getting the word out among readers or potential publishers abroad, but I find some of them are very helpful. A relatively new one on the...
View ArticleThe Death of Napoleon review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Simon Leys' nice little novella, The Death of Napoleon. This has been re-issued (it seems) countless times, but New York...
View ArticleBook surplus ?
At The New York Review of Books' blog Tim Parks wonders whether there are Too Many Books ? -- arguing: "it's hard not to feel that we are in an era of massive overproduction", as well as that...
View ArticleTranslation from ... Chinese
Perry Link's piece on The Wonderfully Elusive Chinese Novel -- nominally a review of the final volume of David Tod Roy's five-volume translation of The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing...
View ArticlePEN Literary Awards shortlists
They've announced the shortlists for the (many) PEN Literary Awards. Of most interest to me (also but not solely because I haven't reviewed any of the shortlisted titles in any of the...
View ArticleWhy these books should win (the BTBA)
I hope you've been following the daily installments of the 'Why This Book Should Win' (the Best Translated Book Award)-series at Three Percent as the judges (and a few others) make the case for...
View ArticleNigeria Prize for Literature
The Nigeria Prize for Literature -- at US$100,000 more remunerative than many major American literary prizes (though you'd figure with the kind of cash they could get around to updating the...
View ArticleGeorgi Gospodinov profile
With The Physics of Sorrow out in English this week Garth Greenwell writes about The Bulgarian Sadness of Georgi Gospodinov at The New Yorker's Page-Turner weblog.
View ArticleThe Four Books review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Yan Lianke's The Four Books. This has been out for a few months in the US (and UK), but has received very little major-US...
View ArticleQ & A: Willis Barnstone
At The New York Times' Sinosphere weblog Ian Johnson has a Q & A with Willis Barnstone on Translating Mao and Touring Beijing With Allen Ginsberg, the translator recounting some interesting...
View ArticleQ & A: Marina Warner
At her Arabic Literature (in English) weblog M. Lynx Qualey has a Q & A with author and Man Booker International Prize judge Marina Warner, including about the wonderful Library of Arabic...
View ArticleJazz, Perfume and the Incident review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Seno Gumira Ajidarma's Jazz, Perfume and the Incident., another title in Lontar's excellent Modern Library of Indonesia.
View ArticleGerman Book Prize
The German Book Prize -- with a winner to be announced in October, at the Frankfurt Book Fair -- has revealed that Publishers submit 167 titles. Alas -- and inexplicably -- they don't...
View ArticleLos Angeles Times Book Prizes
They announced the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes over the weekend -- and one title is even under review at the complete review: First Fiction winner Faces in the Crowd (by Valeria Luiselli).
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