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Min Kamp

Last fall at Frankfurt I visited with quite a few Norwegian publishers, and every one of them was talking about Karl Ove Knausgård’s Min Kamp (My Struggle, or Mein Kampf to make the provocation plain), which our good friends at Oktober Forlaget were publishing in six volumes, three in one season and three the next, for ...

Latest Review: "World's End" by Pablo Neruda

The latest addition to our Reviews Section is Erica Mena’s examination of Pablo Neruda’s World’s End, which came out last year from Copper Canyon, and is translated from the Spanish by William O’Daly. In case anyone’s keeping track, that makes two—count ‘em, two—poetry reviews ...

BTBA 2010: The Fiction Finalists

Man, was it tricky to come up with a top 10 for this year’s BTBA fiction award. This was a really deep list—due in part to the added judges, the fact that we were more focused on reading books for the award all year, and the high quality of stuff that came out in 2009—and any of the twenty-five books on the ...

The Year of Jakov Lind

Today marks the third anniversary of Jakov Lind’s death. It was the occasion of his death that first brought Lind to our attention—I’m pretty sure I first read about him on Ready, Steady, Book, where Mark posted a link to his obituary. I did a little investigating at the time, and I discovered that his books ...

"The Ninth" by Ferenc Barnás [BTBA 2010 Fiction Longlist]

Over the next five days, we’ll be highlighting a book a day from the Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist. Click here for all past write-ups. The Ninth by Ferenc Barnás. Translated from the Hungarian by Paul Olchváry. (Hungary, Northwestern University Press) Below is a guest post from Bill Marx, one ...

"News from the Empire" by Fernando del Paso [BTBA 2010 Fiction Longlist]

Over the next six days, we’ll be highlighting a book a day from the Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist. Click here for all past write-ups. News from the Empire by Fernando del Paso. Translated from the Spanish by Alfonso Gonzalez and Stella T. Clark. (Mexico, Dalkey Archive) I can’t do half the ...

Indie Bookstore Pics (Part I)

The other week I was talking with Paul Kozlowski of Other Press about studies that have been done on what gets a reader to actually purchase a book. As we all cynically assume, when it comes to purchasing a physical book from a brick-and-mortar store, reviews hardly matter at all—it’s all about the cover and the ...