On NPR . . .

Yesterday, the NPR news program Day to Day talked at some length about “The Best Foreign Books You’ve Never Heard Of”—a discussion spurred, like so many others, by Jean-Marie Gustave le Clezio’s recently awarded Nobel Prize for Literature and the general U.S. reaction of “Ba?”

So, Day to Day invited David Kipen—director of Literature and National Reading Initiatives at the National Endowment for the Arts—to discuss the premise:

If most Americans have never heard of this accomplished author of more than 30 novels, essays and story collections, perhaps it’s because there is so little emphasis on international books in the U.S. publishing world.

Kipen offered a list of some international lit starting points (such as Antonio Lobo Antunes and Carlos Fuentes), described the drought of literature in translation in America, and—at about four minutes in—he kindly recommends us (that is: Open Letter, Three Percent, and the University of Rochester) as the place to read and learn more about international literature in translation.

Go have a listen.