Latest Review: Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya
Shortly after arriving in Rochester with the goal of creating Open Letter, I was flipping through the Ray-Gude Merlin Agency rights list and came across Horacio Castellanos Moya. I immediately e-mailed Nicole Witt only to find out that New Directions had already purchased the rights to Senselessness. As a publisher I was ...
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Senselessness
The first of El Salvadoran Horacio Castellano Moya’s books to be translated into English, Senselessness is frankly, one of the best books to be published this year. It’s one of those rare books written in a very specific, very stylized fashion that’s simultaneously accessible and captivating. I am not ...
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Reading the World 2008: Yalo by Elias Khoury
This is the fifteenth Reading the World 2008 title we’re covering. Write-ups of the other titles can be found here. And information about the Reading the World program—a special collaboration between publishers and independent booksellers to promote literature in translation throughout the month of June—is ...
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The Translator's Paradox
Jeff Waxman brought my attention to an article in the June issue of Commentary by Hillel Halkin entitled “The Translator’s Paradox.” It’s primarily about the relationship between Hebrew and Jews, about how translation is aided the demise of Hebrew as the primary language of Jews: Matti Megged ...
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As If It's Not Hard Enough Selling Translations
Michael Orthofer has a great rant over at Literary Saloon about “how not to publish translations.” His piece centers around Serbian Classics Press, a press that I’ve personally never heard of (neither had Michael, so I feel like my ignorance is excusable), but one that is bringing out Mansarda, Danilo ...
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Open Letter on Facebook
E.J. set up the Open Letter page on Facebook this afternoon, and so far we only have one lonely fan . . .
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Lost Book Club
I think it’s pretty clear that we like to reference Lost whenever possible, and the new Lost Book Club, is a perfect example of why we’re obsessed with this show. This very elegant and slick site is supposed to be the “home to any and all literary references made on the show—from Stephen King to ...
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