Korea and the Nobel Prize
Reporting on the Seoul Literary Society's latest meeting, The Korea Times explains Why Korea wants Nobel Prize for literature. Well, given the Swedish connection, it's natural that it...
View ArticleAl-Mutanabbi Street bulldozed
As Arabic Literature (in English) reports, Al-Mutanabbi Street Bookstalls Bulldozed, which is sad and bad news. See also Ali al-Saray's report in Al Monitor, Historic Baghdad Book Market...
View ArticleThe Rehearsal review
With New Zealand the guest of honour at the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair -- see their official site -- I continue to seek out works by New Zealand authors, but, damn, they're hard to find...
View ArticleProfile: Salwa Bakr
At Qantara.de Claudia Mende profiles Egyptian author Salwa Bakr, in The Voice of the Marginalized. Interesting that: She has already won numerous international accolades for her novels,...
View ArticleProfile: Peter Stothard
In The bionic book worm in The Independent Nick Clark profiles Times Literary Supplement editor and 2012 Man Booker Prize chair of judges Peter Stothard. The saddest sentence, about...
View ArticleNeustadt Festival of International Literature
The Neustadt Festival of International Literature and Culture starts today -- there's an official site, www.neustadtfestival.org, but last I tried it it wouldn't open; I hope that's fixed by...
View ArticleThe Cardboard House review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Martín Adán's 1928 The Cardboard House in a new edition from New Directions, for which Katherine Silver has revised her 1990...
View ArticleSuing over advances
The Smoking Gun reports that Book Publisher Goes To Court To Recoup Hefty Advances From Prominent Writers, as Penguin is suing a dozen of its authors for the return of advances for books that...
View ArticlePostmodernism in ... Burma
In Writers examine uncertainty of truth in The Myanmar Times they talk to a couple of Burmese authors of, to varying degrees, a postmodern bent, such as Thit Sar Ni. Another author, Min...
View ArticleNew: New Books in German
As love german books points out, the new issue of New Books in German is now available online. Lots of reviews/overviews of new German books (scroll down and click on covers, or use the...
View ArticleNew: Review of Contemporary Fiction
The new (well, Spring/2012 -- but new online) issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction is now available, and while the Robert Coover Festschrift-content isn't freely accessible, all the...
View ArticleMan Booker International Prize finalists to be announced in January
They've announced that the finalists for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize will be announced 24 January, at the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival. The winner of this biennial...
View ArticleGöteborg Book Fair 2012
The Göteborg Book Fair starts today and runs through the 30th; aside from the usual fair-activity there should be some decent Nobel Prize gossiping going on (among the many participants is the...
View ArticleApocalypse Hotel review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Hồ Anh Thái's Apocalypse Hotel -- a rare contemporary (well, decade-old) Vietnamese novel made available in English. A few...
View ArticleKristín Ómarsdóttir Q & A
At The Rumpus Padma Viswanathan has a Q & A with Children in Reindeer Woods-author Kristín Ómarsdóttir.
View ArticleJerzy Pilch advice
Salon (Slovakia) reports on a recent article by Polish author Jerzy Pilch (His Current Woman, etc.), offering "five warnings to would-be diarists", in Visegrad Mirror: The Poles Are Always...
View ArticleBook embargo (attempts)
In The Washington Post Neely Tucker tries to explain Why the embargo on Rowling's 'Casual Vacancy' didn't hold, as the latest Harry Potter-book was apparently embargoed but not entirely...
View ArticleThe Woman who Died a Lot review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jasper Fforde's latest Thursday Next-novel, The Woman who Died a Lot.
View ArticleTranslation credit
Online polls (like all polls) have to be taken with many grains of salt, but it's still worth noting that a recent German boersenblatt.net poll asking how translators should be credited on...
View ArticleJalal Al-e Ahmad Awards
I often ridicule prizes such as the Man Booker, which consider only 100 or 120 books each year (from the entire Commonwealth .... seriously ?), but there might be such a thing as being too open...
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