- Open Letter Books
- Three Percent Problem
- Translated Book Award
- Translation Studies
- Translation Database
Just a reminder that the New Literature from Europe festival kicks off tonight with an event at McNally Jackson at 7pm.
This year’s festival is called “Haunting the Present,” and here’s a brief intro from the site:
Today’s Europe is a fascinating convergence of old and new, with high speed trains roaring past thousand-year-old towns. The past and present are never far away from each other, and this year’s New Literature from Europe festival explores this proximity by presenting some of the most powerful recent works of fiction by eight of the most important contemporary European authors. In Haunting the Present, the festival’s seventh annual series, the overriding theme is the continued sway of history on contemporary life. Readers will witness the changes over a century in one house in Bucharest and in another house on a lake outside Berlin as its residents flee each successive regime. They will be transported from the mythical Polish village of Primeval to a small, bucolic French town shortly after World War II, and beyond.
In this year’s New Literature from Europe, eight cultural institutes have teamed up to present a series of discussions and readings featuring eight critically acclaimed European writers: Philippe Claudel (France), Kirmen Uribe (Spain), Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany), Gerhard Roth (Austria), Radka Denemarková (Czech Republic), Olga Tokarczuk (Poland), Gabriela Adameşteanu (Romania), and Antonia Arslan (Italy). Moderators will include distinguished writer André Aciman, chair of Comparative Literature and director of the Writers’ Institute at the CUNY Graduate Center and Susan Bernofsky, Guest Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College (CUNY).
That’s a pretty sweet lineup of authors and translators, and the four events that make up this festival all sound well-crafted and interesting. Here’s a bit of info on all the goings on:
Haunting the Present: A Reading with Eight European Writers
Tuesday, November 16th, 7pm
McNally Jackson
Translating the Past that Haunts the Present: A Lecture with Jenny Erpenbeck and Philippe Claudel
Wednesday, November 17th, 3-5pm
CUNY Grad Center
Haunting the Present: A Conversation with the Authors
Wednesday, November 17th, 6:30 pm & 7:45 pm
Center for Fiction
Eight European Voices: Reading and Reception
Thursday, November 18th, 7pm
The Czech Center
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. . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
