- Open Letter Books
- Three Percent Problem
- Translated Book Award
- Translation Studies
- Translation Database
Good news on two fronts from Lillehammer: the internet is free, and they have free coffee in the lobby of the hotel via a Nespresso machine—I’ll have to get one for myself soon.
The festival started off for us yesterday with a lecture by Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad at the Lillehammer Kunstmuseum. The overall theme of the talk, “Viscosity, or just hanging around: The meaning of presence in contemporary literature”, was a little bit lost on me—I think you needed to be pretty familiar with all of the authors Kjell talked about to see the connections he was drawing—but it was a good overview of contemporary Norwegian literature nonetheless, touching on Graywolf’s Per Petterson and Dag Solstad, our Jan Kjaerstad (whose last name I spent a long time trying to learn how to pronounce over drinks, I think I almost have it), Erlend Loe, Inger Bråtveit (more on her later), and Hanne Ørstavik (who the people from Forlaget Oktober all really love).
After a nice reception/dinner buffet in the museum, the crowd moved on to Bingo’n, a club that is hosting a bunch of events at the festival. Last night’s event featured Inger Bråtveit and Jenny Hval of Rockettothesky. They alternated reading (Inger read from her forthcoming, unfinished novel) and singing—when Jenny Hval first started singing I was absolutely blown away; the songs I linked to on her myspace page don’t do her live performance justice. For the most part it was in Norwegian (some of the songs were in English), so I didn’t understand a word, but the crowd seemed appreciative, although nobody could explain to me exactly what went on when I asked after the performance.
All in all it was a very interesting first day. Today a few Norwegian authors will be presenting their books to us, and then I have a few meetings. I’ll try to post another update tomorrow.
Today’s “Norway-is-expensive” item: 1 bottle of Heineken costs 61 NOK, which is a little more than $12.
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. . .
