Blog Profile / The Literary Saloon
| URL : | http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Academics / Literature | |
| Posts on Regator: | 7408 | |
| Posts / Week: | 26.8 | |
| Archived Since: | March 2, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
Women, translation, and WLT
I discussed Alison Anderson's Words without Borders Dispatches weblog post Where Are the Women in Translation ? a couple of weeks ago, and it's good to see the question is still getting some attention: now Daniel Simon has a look at Women Writing, Editing, and Translating at World Literature Today (and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, etc.).
German translated book award to Open City
The Internationale Literaturpreis - Haus der Kulturen der Welt, now awarded for the fifth time, is the major German 'best translated book award' (with the Leipzig Book Fair Prize the other major contender). At €25,000 for the authorShow More Summary
BookExpo America adventures
Currently, they're holding BookExpo America ('BEA') in New York City, and as a New York resident I don't have any good excuse for avoiding the proceedings, so yesterday I joined thousands in the halls of the Jacob Javits Center. Aside...Show More Summary
Origin Unknown review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Oliver Rohe's Origin Unknown, forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press. It does include the great line: Now all they need is to add Céline to the mix, and to start using ellipses everywhere to completely annihilate us.
Literature in translation
At the Prospect weblog Matt Lewis looks at the recent Man Booker International Prize (see my previous mention) and, in A window to the world, wonders, with the prize going yet again to an English-writing author: In a globalised world with more, better translations than ever, why are we still so resistant to literature in a foreign language ?
Nike longlist
They announced the 20-title-strong longlist for the Polish Nike prize a few weeks back. All genres are eligible, and so you find fiction, non, poetry -- and now also a comic book -- all up for the same prize See the list on one pageShow More Summary
The Age of Reason review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the first volume in Jean-Paul Sartre's The Roads to Freedom-trilogy, The Age of Reason. I've enjoyed a lot of Sartre's writing -- the polemics, the auto/biographical work, the dramas -- but I have to admit his fiction (and his purely philosophical work -- Being and Nothingness...) has never really won me over.
Korean rights for Murakami novel: $1.47 million
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the South Korean competition to land Murakami Haruki's latest novel, ???????????????????? -- and now Baek Byung-yeul reports in The Korea Times that it's Game over: Minumsa wins Murakami sweepstakes,...Show More Summary
40,716-line Chinese epic
In China Daily Mei Jia reports that Epic poem a milestone in Chinese literature, as the newly-released: The Chinese Epic, written by Hua Wenfeng [???] and published by Writers Publishing House, is a three-volume entity of poems totaling...Show More Summary
Marilyn Booth Q & A
At Arabic Literature (in English) Sarah Irving has an interesting, thorough Q & A with translator Marilyn Booth on What Should Be Obvious (But Isn't) About Translating Arabic Literature -- well worth a look. (And I think it's safe to...Show More Summary
International literary prize: Ceny Franze Kafky
The Franz Kafka Prize, which hasn't been around all that long, got a lot of attention a few years back when they awarded the prize in back-to-back years to the authors that went on to take the Nobel Prize in Literature that same year,...Show More Summary
International literary prize: Prêmio Camões
The big biggest Portuguese-language author prize -- the equivalent of the Spanish-language Premio Cervantes or the German-language Georg-Büchner-Preis -- is the Prêmio Camões, and they've just announced that The Tuner of Silences-author Mia Couto takes this year's €100,000 prize. See also, for example, the report in the Portuguese American Journal.
Peter Englund Q & A
As I mentioned last week, five names have been submitted to the Swedish Academy as the likely finalists for this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, and the shortlist will be finalized in a few days' time. In Izvestia Liza Novikova now...Show More Summary
From the Fatherland, with Love review
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Murakami Ryu's From the Fatherland, with Love, just out (in the UK) from an increasingly ambitious Pushkin Press that isn't just publishing great old favorites (Couperus,...Show More Summary
Sarah Kirsch (1935-2013)
Aside from Hans Magnus Enzensberger, the great German-language post-war poets were largely East German (or Austrian), and the generation born in the mid to late 1930s which included towering figures such as Volker Braun, Heinz Czechowski,...Show More Summary
Howard Goldblatt Q & A
At the Los Angeles Review of Books Stephen Sparks offers Translating Mo Yan: An Interview with Howard Goldblatt, with some interesting discussion of the role of the translator (a more significant figure than many readers, reviewers,Show More Summary
Man Booker International Prize follow-up
The announcement that Lydia Davis was awarded the 2013 Man Booker International Prize has attracted a good amount of attention (see also my previous mention). Among the most enthusiastic pieces in support of her receiving the prize is...Show More Summary
Femrite profile
I've mentioned the Uganda Women Writers' Association, FEMRITE numerous times over the years, and it's good to see another high-profile profile of this very successful institution, as Elizabeth Day now reports on How Uganda's female writers found their voice in The Observer.
Linguistic absolutism
Aside from the occasional complaints about online writing habits debasing the language, most folk seem to feel comfortable enough with English language usage going with whatever flow takes it -- or whatever regional variations (in the...Show More Summary
Hamid Ismailov Q & A
At Russia beyond the Headlines Phoebe Taplin reports that Uzbek writer popularizes Russian literature in London in her Q & A with Hamid Ismailov. His most recently translated book is the 'reality novel' A Poet and Bin-Laden, which: "combines...Show More Summary