Best of 2012, cont'd
The Weekly helpfully aggregates: 'The top eight books published in 2012 according to the London newspapers' Christmas selections', in Books of the year: critics' choice at Christmas....
View ArticleBookselling in ... the UK
Well, this doesn't sound good: 'The number of high street bookshops in Britain has more than halved in just seven years due to the rise of e-books and the consumer downturn, research for The...
View ArticleThe Manila Review
This looks promising -- a new 'biannual online publication that aims to map the ideas that shape public discussion in the Philippines', The Manila Review.
View ArticleGerman critics best-list, January 2013
The SWR-Bestenliste, where thirty leading German literary critics weigh in on the new publications every month, is out for January 2013, with the Handke-Unseld correspondence taking first place...
View ArticleQ & A: Peter Constantine
The Words without Borders weblog, Dispatches, has a neat series going: 'The Translator Relay', with "a new interview each month". Just up: the Q & A with Peter Constantine.
View ArticleQ & A: Frances Pritchett
At the Asia Society's Asia Blog Jeff Tompkins has a brief Interview: Translator Gives Urdu Literary Classic 'Basti' a Passport Into English, as Frances Pritchett answers some questions about...
View ArticleQ & A: Bernard Comment
At Sampsonia Way Olivia Stransky has An Interview with Bernard Comment -- mainly about his recently translated novel, The Shadow of Memory (and regrettably not about his work as head of Fiction...
View ArticleThe Illicit Happiness of Other People review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Manu Joseph's The Illicit Happiness of Other People, now also coming out in the US. Given recent attention of how...
View ArticleKwani? !
Kwani? is among the most impressive literary efforts to come out of Africa in recent decades, but apprently now there's the inevitable backlash -- so, for example, Abenea Ndago suggests it's...
View ArticleChristopher MacLehose profile
In The Guardian Nicholas Wroe profiles Christopher MacLehose: A life in publishing. I still stop in front of any of those old Harvill titles published in his day when I come across them...
View ArticleBestselling (English) books 2012
Desperate for the year-end traffic, rather than getting things right, The Guardian now offers a list of the Top 100 bestselling books of 2012. (As you may have noticed, 2012 is not actually...
View ArticleLes Murray profile
In The Age Jason Steger has Lunch with Les Murray. About getting the Nobel Prize -- for which he's often considered a contender -- Murray says: I'm not sure what good it would do if it...
View Article2012 reviews
A few more international looks back at the year that was: - El País now has their mejores libros del año 2012, which is always an interesting (and nicely presented) collection. Great to...
View Article2013 previews
I've already pointed to a batch of 2013-literary previews, and this weekend several more have appeared: - In The Observer Tim Adams offers a very limited Fiction for spring - preview...
View ArticlePatrick White
Nice to see that at the close of the year -- Patrick White's centenary -- there's another piece about him: at The Rumpus David Rice offers Flowers in the Desert: Patrick White at 100. As...
View ArticleTrees without Wind review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Li Rui's Trees without Wind, a 1996 novel now available in English (don't ask when the French already had this translated ...)...
View ArticleUwe Tellkamp to continue The Tower
Uwe Tellkamp is working on a continuation of his massive German Book Prize-winning (2008) novel, The Tower (Der Turm, forthcoming in English from Frisch & Co. next year), with a working...
View ArticleFrench best of the year lists
More international best of the year lists, as two French ones have now appeared: - Lire's traditional Les 20 meilleurs livres de l'année has twenty books in twenty categories -- with...
View ArticleThe year in reviews at the complete review
It's been a busy year at the complete review: the 236 reviews posted mark the most in any year since 2000, and more than 10 per cent more than last year's total (212). That's also a...
View ArticleWinter list
The Winter 2012 issue of list - Books from Korea is now up, with the usual variety of reviews and (brief) articles. Of particular interest: coverage of Lee Young-do's Dragon Raja,...
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