Knowledge of Hell
Antonio Lobo Antunes’s books contain many of the things that are fantastic about contemporary literature; at the same time, these books exemplify a lot of the traits that scare people off from literature in translation. This may sound stupid, but even his name is a problem. Where to shelve it in the bookstore—under ...
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Bolano, Bolano, Bolano
So, following up on yesterday’s post about the coverage of Bolano in The Nation and at Bookninja, today Michael Orthofer at the Literary Saloon has info about the anxiously awaited 2666, Bolano’s final book, and supposed magnum opus. How very exciting to find that, at least on the American Amazon.com site, ...
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More on IMPAC Shortlist
To follow up on last night’s brief post about the IMPAC Shortlist, be sure to check out the coverage at The Millions to find links to reviews of the books and/or interviews with the authors. (I wanted to do something similar, but this post is better than anything I would’ve come up ...
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IMPAC Shortlist
The Shortlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (which is one choice exclamation point away from being the most exciting prize out there) was just announced: The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas (Spanish) (trans. by Anne McLean) The Sweet and Simple Kind by Yasmine Gooneraratne (Sri ...
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More Bolano, More Savage Detectives
For fans of his work, it’s great to see that Bolano continues to get great attention. Nazi Literature in the Americas is on display at every bookstore I’ve been in recently, and has been getting decent review coverage, including a long piece in The Nation by Carmen Boullosa, which concludes with a strong ...
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Africa Reading Challenge
Thanks to Scott Esposito for bringing our attention to the Africa Reading Challenge starting up at Siphoning Off a Few Thoughts. In recent years I’ve become increasingly interested in reading books dealing with Africa, and so I present the Africa Reading Challenge. Participants commit to read – in the ...
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Poetry Magazine and Translations
April is National Poetry Month, so we’ll be highlighting more works of translated poetry over the next few weeks than we normally do. (In case you’re wondering, in the database there are 11 collections of translated poetry scheduled to come out this month.) Interestingly, Poetry magazine’s April issue ...
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