- Open Letter Books
- Three Percent Problem
- Translated Book Award
- Translation Studies
- Translation Database
Every year BOMB puts together a special “Americas Issue” focusing on art and literature from a different part of the Americas. This tends to mean South America, but you never know, maybe Canada will be—or was?—the focus at some point in time. Regardless, this is always one of my favorite issues of the year from this esteemed magazine that’s been around since 1981, and this year’s focus on Colombia and Venezuela keeps that tradition going.
Some of the highlights:
- Antonio Ungar (whose “My Grandrather’s Disintegration” is included in the “First Proof” supplement as translated by Katherine Silver) has an interview with Evelio Rosero, author of The Armies, which won this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize ;
- Conversation between Sergio Fajardo and Giancarlo Mazzanti about Medellin’s urban transformation;
- Discussion between Venezuela’s Ana Teresa Torres and Carmen Boullosa; and
- Interview with Juan Gabriel Vasquez (The Informers) conducted by Silvana Paternostro.
The “First Proof” literary supplement also has pieces by Luis Enrique Belmonte, Carolina Lozada, Victor Manuel Gaviria, Yolanda Pantin, Federico Vegas, Hector Abad Faciolince, Igor Barreto, and Luis Molina-Pantin. (You have to buy the actual magazine to get access to these pieces . . .)
I don’t know as much about contemporary Venezuelan literature, but Colombia is pretty hot these days with both Vasquez’s The Informers and Rosero’s The Armies getting a lot of good attention. Not to mention Santiago Gamboa . . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
Kids these days. They think they’ve invented everything. The McOndo writers and Crack Generation, who so proudly buck the Magic Realist tendencies of García Márquez, who seek to find a place within Latin American letters sans spirits . . .. . .
Reviewed by Chad W. Post
When I was about two-thirds of the way through Neuman’s very ambitious, very engrossing novel, Bromance Will Evans asked me what I thought the purpose the rapist had in this book. Not who the rapist was—something that’s held in suspense. . .
Reviewed by Jennifer Marquart
“At night Amarâq is coated with a darkness as viscous as unmixed colors, neither the fjord nor the mountains, valleys, lakes, or the river exist, there is only a black mass, a void that spreads across the landscape sporadically, pressing. . .
Reviewed by John Thomas Mahany
If you’ve been following any of the recent Antoine Volodine talk going around Three Percent—both on the blog or on the podcasts—and have heard his fans wax obsessive over all his alter author-egos, you’re probably starting to feel some Volodine. . .
Reviewed by Aleksandra Fazlipour
Muireann Maguire’s Red Spectres is a stunning and engaging collection of eleven Russian gothic tales written by various authors during the early Soviet Era, all but two stories of which are featured in English for the first time ever. These. . .
Reviewed by Jeremy Osner
“The small stone plaza was floating in the midday heat. The Christ of Elqui, kneeling on the ground, his gaze thrown back on high, the part in his hair dark under the Atacaman sun—he felt himself falling into an ecstasy.. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
