French-American Foundation Translation Prizes
They handed out the French-American Foundation/Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prizes yesterday (at a nice ceremony at the Century Association which I was able to attend -- there was a...
View ArticlePrincess of Asturias Award for Literature
They've announced that Leonardo Padura Fuentes will receive this year's (now) Princess of Asturias Award for Literature (it used to be 'prince' but they made that guy king, so now its under the...
View ArticlePremio Strega finalists
They had the first vote to winnow down the Premio Strega to five finalist (and they will, surely, eventually be posting the results here ...). Elena Ferrante's The Story of the Lost...
View ArticleEuropese Literatuurprijs finalists
They've announced the shortlist for the 2015 Europese Literatuurprijs, the Dutch best translated (European) book award, with a good-looking list that includes Rafael Chirbes' On the Shore (due...
View ArticleThe Chinese Political Novel review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Catherine Vance Yeh's The Chinese Political Novel: Migration of a World Genre, published in the Harvard East Asian...
View ArticleWolfgang Jeschke (1936-2015)
German science fiction author Wolfgang Jeschke has passed away; see, for example, the (German) notice in Die Welt. The rare German science fiction author actually published in English...
View ArticleBarbe bleue review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Amélie Nothomb's Barbe bleue, her (not-yet-translated-into-English) variation on Bluebeard. But fear not, English-speaking...
View ArticleMichael Crichton profile
At Grantland Michael Weinreb has a profile of Michael Crichton, with a focus on his becoming a writer and the early pseudonymous work (like Drug of Choice). I wonder why there hasn't...
View ArticleFT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Awards longlist
They've announced the longlists for the FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Awards, including in the fiction category; among the ten selected titles are: Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique...
View ArticleSummer reads
'Tis the time of year for newspapers to pad their pages with 'what to read this summer'-lists. At least a few of them are of the writer-suggestion sort -- the TLS has a sampling from the...
View ArticleOxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
They've announced the winner of this year's Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and it is ... this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize-winning translation by Susan Bernofsky of Jenny...
View ArticleIndividuals review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Lao Ma's collection of 'flash fiction', Individuals.
View ArticleNew Quarterly Conversation
Issue 40 - Summer 2015 of the Quarterly Conversation is now available online -- always interesting coverage of some very interesting books.
View ArticleNobel obsession in ... Iran
I've lost count of how often I've said it, but if your measure of success is nabbing a Nobel, you're doing it wrong. Alas, it remains seen as national validation -- and, even worse, folks have...
View Article'Internet literature' in ... China
At ChinaDaily Xu Jing reports that a 'Golden age' dawns for Chinese web-writers as Chinese Internet literature apparently continues to flourish. I particularly like the categorization of...
View ArticlePrize: Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
They've announced that The Ten Thousand Things, by John Spurling, has won this year's Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction (for novels: "set at least 60 years ago", and, sigh, written in...
View ArticlePrize: PEN Pinter Prize
They've announced that James Fenton will receive this year's PEN Pinter Prize (on 6 October). His writing -- even beyond his fine poetry -- is certainly of interest; see also, for...
View ArticleHarry Rowohlt (1945-2015)
Harry Rowohlt, one of Germany's most renowned -- and visible, though for other reasons -- translators has passed away; see, for example, the report at DeutscheWelle. He translated a lot...
View ArticleWikipedia in print
Wikipedia is apparently a very popular online resource -- and a fairly extensive one ("4,893,476 articles in English" alone, at last count (more by the time you check, no doubt ...))....
View ArticleThe Self-Propelled Island review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of a new translation (by Marie-Thérèse Noiset) of Jules Verne's The Self-Propelled Island, just out from the University of Nebraska...
View Article