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Happy Birthday to the Complete Review

Back on April 5, 1999, the Complete Review published its first review, giving Nicholson Baker’s The Everlasting Story of Nory a “C” for being “too cute for its own good.” Well, 2,250 reviews and ten years later and CR is still going strong. Michael Orthofer has a nice write up about his first ...

Latest Review: The Halfway House by Guillermo Rosales

Our latest review is of Guillermo Rosales’s The Halfway House, which is coming out from New Directions next month. Rosales was a Cuban exile who was misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic and ended up committing suicide. Before taking his own life, he destroyed most of his writings, leaving behind only two works: The ...

The Halfway House

The first of Cuban author Guillermo Rosales’s novels to be translated into English, The Halfway House is not a story that we’re accustomed to. This is the anti-success story, one in which hope is choked out by failure and abandonment; this is the greater, sicker part of the immigration narrative. The Halfway House is ...

Alain Mabanckou Interview

Richard Lea has a great audio interview with Alain Mabanckou about Broken Glass, his second novel to be published in English. (Although apparently only in the UK for now. Soft Skull did African Psycho a couple years ago, but I haven’t seen a listing for the new book yet.) The Guardian also posted a positive review of ...

Unnecessary Quotes!

OK, so this isn’t exactly translation related, but hell, it’s Friday and I think this just became my new favorite blog. When living in Normal, IL, I was obsessed for a time with misused quotation marks. And trust me, Normal is filthy with unnecessary quotes . . . like the headline in The Pantagraph (the local, ...

Walking Tour of NY Independent Bookstores

Based on the response to their online walking tour of NY indies, The Millions are taking this idea physical and have organized a real walking tour of independent bookstores in New York. (Or at least six of them.) On Saturday, May 2nd at 11am, participants will meet at Three Lives (154 W. 10th at Waverly Place) and go from ...

IMPAC Prize Shortlist

The 2009 Shortlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was announced earlier today. And here are your eight finalists (is there any rhyme and/or reason to this figure? or the enormously long longlist?): The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz Ravel by Jean Echenoz, translated from the ...