The Icelandic Connection
If you're a long time reader of Three Percent and/or literature in translation, I'm sure you've heard of Deep Vellum, and probably know most of their history. But to kick off my series of posts about their September/October books—and to put the numbers below in context—it's probably worth a quick recap. Back in the ...
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One Last, Final Last, Icelandic Post [Icelandic Sports]
So I’m suffering the head cold of a decade, but I should be back tomorrow with normal posts, book reviews, etc., etc. In the meantime, I thought I’d leave you with a post about Stjarnan, my favorite Icelandic soccer club. To be honest, although I love me some football (especially Barcelona, especially the ...
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Sjonni's Friends, "Coming Home" [Icelandic Music]
So after highlighting a number of great Icelandic performers, it may seem a bit odd to end the week with a Eurovision song, but, well, it actually seems sort of fitting at the same time. If you’re not familiar with Eurovision, you must read this. (And then get ready for next year’s ...
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"Children in Reindeer Woods" by Kristin Ómarsdóttir [Icelandic Literature]
We’re bringing Lytton Smith’s translation of Children in Reindeer Woods next April, which is a ways off, I know, but it still seems like the perfect time to introduce this strange, haunting novel. This novel takes place at a “temporary home for children” called Children in Reindeer Woods, where ...
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AmazonCrossing Makes Huge Commitment to Icelandic Literature [Icelandic News]
At a press conference earlier this week, AmazonCrossing and Fabulous Iceland announced that Amazon would be publishing ten Icelandic titles in the near future, starting with The Greenhouse (which we featured here). Here’s the official announcement: “The Icelandic series from AmazonCrossing will ensure that ...
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Worm Is Green, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" [Icelandic Music]
One last legitimate Icelandic song . . . Here’s the Last.fm write-up of Worm Is Green: Worm Is Green started as the bedroom electronica project of Arni Asgeirsson, who soon enlisted longtime friends from his hometown of Akranes, Iceland (population 5,500) to flesh out his melodic soundscapes. Solidifying into a ...
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Útúrdur Gives Iceland What it Wants [Icelandic Culture]
Here’s one last guest post from the wonderful Amanda De Marco. I want to publicly thank her for all of her contributions this week. I would send her a bottle of Brennivin as a token of my appreciation, but that shit is DEATH. For more of Amanda’s writings, be sure to check out Readux: Reading in Berlin. ...
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Sigur Ros, "Hoppipolla" [Icelandic Music]
Since all roads in Iceland lead to Sigur Ros, it’s only appropriate that we include at least one of their songs in the Iceland Music feature. So here’s “Hoppipolla” from Takk. And since I love you, here’s an added bonus—Kronos Quartet covering ...
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Let's All Eat Rotten Shark and Puffin! [Icelandic Food]
Rather than try and explain traditional Icelandic food like putrefied shark and puffin, I thought I’d just let this guy’s video speak for itself. Thanks whoever you are for sharing this on YouTube and for going all in on the Icelandic eating experience. You deserve a bottle of Brennevin. ...
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Jónsi & Alex, "Happiness" [Icelandic Music]
First up today is the song “Happiness” by Jónsi & Alex from the Riceboy Sleeps album. Drifting, pretty post-rock, I like this album a lot more than the solo album Jonsi put out last year. And as you may know, or have already guessed, this is Jón Þór “Jónsi” Birgisson of Sigur Ros . . . It all comes ...
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Seabear, "I'll Build You a Fire" [Icelandic Music]
There’s something about most Icelandic bands that’s just pleasing. By contrast, in my mind I associate Sweden & Finland with Death Metal (and ABBA) and Iceland with Operatic Indie Folk. An belief which will probably most definitely be clear by the end of Icelandic Week. Up now is Seabear, which was started ...
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Visit Iceland! [Icelandic Culture]
Come for the pretty scenery, stay for the President’s homemade pancakes! Inspired by Iceland Invitations from Inspired By Iceland on ...
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"The Greenhouse" by Audur Ava Olafsdottir [Icelandic Literature]
Audur Ava Olfasdottir’s The Greenhouse, translated by Brian FitzGibbon, is one of only three Icelandic translations coming out in 2011, so it deserves a special bit of attention. This also happens to be the first Icelandic title to be published by AmazonCrossing, the relatively new imprint that’s dedicated to ...
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The Artists Formerly Known as Nýhil [Icelandic Culture]
This is another guest post by Amanda De Marco. Quick correction to her bio: She’s actually not currently in Iceland. But she was. Recently. Now she’s in Frankfurt enjoying the awesome that is the Book Fair. The seventh annual Reykjavik International Poetry Festival just took place last weekend. Thor Steinarsson ...
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"The Ambassador" by Bragi Olafsson [Icelandic Literature]
Since we publish two of his novels, and since we featured his band yesterday, I thought today would be a perfect day to excerpt Bragi Olafsson’s The Ambassador, which is translated by Lytton Smith. (FYI: Lytton is the one responsible for providing me with the bottle of Brennivin featured in my upcoming “Black ...
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Ólafur Arnalds, "Tunglið" [Icelandic Music]
Sorry for yesterday’s minor hiccup re: Icelandic Week. TMI: On Saturday, a car of deaf kids ran a red light and slammed into me. (Yes, I know this sounds like the set-up to a joke.) I had my two kids with me, so it was exceptionally scary, but we’re all fine. As a result though, I’ve spent the past two days ...
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Emiliana Torrini, "Gun" [Icelandic Music]
When I first started talking about Icelandic Week, Intern Six (aka Liz Mullins) insisted that I include an Emiliana Torrini song, which reminded me that Torrini is actually Icelandic . . . Here’s her bio from Last.fm: Emilíana Torrini is an Icelandic singer-songwriter, born on 16 May 1977 in Kópavogur, Iceland. ...
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Gerður Kristný [Fabulous Iceland]
Another thing I want to do this week (in addition to a special post about Icelandic cuisine) is highlight some of the as-yet-untranslated authors featured on the wonderful Fabulous Iceland site. First up is Gerður Kristný, who I had the honor of meeting last time I was in Iceland. (Facebook friends go first! Besides, ...
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Amiina, "Rugla" [Icelandic Music]
Amiina is sort of the perfect Icelandic post-rock/electronic/experimental band. They formed as an all-woman string quartet back in the 1990s, and went on to perform as the string section for Sigur Ros. Here’s a description from Last.fm: Amiina’s debut album, Kurr (2007), was performed on a disparate jumble of ...
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Sugarcubes, "Birthday" [Icelandic Music]
This one’s a given. Bjork + Bragi Olafsson. (We’ll be featuring Bragi’s literary work later this week.) Man, does this take me back . . . Originally released in 1988, Life’s Too Good is still pretty awesome. “Birthday” was what really put The Sugarcubes on the map, and evokes a very ...
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Book Sluts [Icelandic Culture]
This is a guest article by Amanda DeMarco, editor of Readux: Reading in Berlin and contributor to Publishing Perspectives. Just so happens that Amanda is in Iceland right now, and totally wanted in on this Icelandic Week project. In addition to this piece, she’s working on at least one more for us, which will run later ...
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"Under the Glacier" by Halldor Laxness [Icelandic Literature]
In addition to featuring various Icelandic tunes this week, I also want to highlight a number of works of Icelandic literature that are available in English translation. And since Halldor Laxness is Iceland’s one and only Nobel Prize winner, he seems like the perfect author to start with. Laxness was born in 1902 and ...
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Mum, "Blessed Brambles" [Icelandic Music]
If there’s one thing Americans know about Iceland, it’s that this small country has an amazingly vibrant music scene. And over the course of this week, we’ll be highlighting a bunch of bands and performers, starting with Múm (pronounced “Moom”), one of my personal favorites. I like all of ...
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Introducing Icelandic Week
The Frankfurt Book Fair kicks off next Wednesday, and since I won’t be able to attend this year (boo!), I’ve decided that instead, next week will be “Icelandic Week” here at Three Percent as a way of celebrating Iceland as this year’s Guest of Honor. We’ve got an amazing amount of stuff ...
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Nordic Voices and Hallgrimur Helgason [Iceland Follow-Up Post] [UPDATE]
Last week I mentioned a few contemporary Icelandic authors, including Hallgrimur Helgason. In the post about Hallgrimur, I mentioned The Author of Iceland, which won the 2001 Icelandic Literature Prize, and sounds like a cool, playful book. Well, not only did someone comment about how this is “one of the top 5 ...
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Crushing on Iceland and Another Interesting Author
First off, I can’t believe that I managed to leave Hallgrimur Helgason off of yesterday’s list of contemporary Icelandic authors. His novel 101 Reykjavik was published a few years back by Scribner, and was also made into a movie. The book of his that always sounded most interested to me though is The Author of ...
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Some Icelandic Authors
The article I wrote for Publishing Perspectives about the Iceland Literary Festival (along with a video interview with Kristjan B. Jonasson, the head of the Icelandic Publishers Association) will go live tomorrow morning, but in the meantime, I thought I’d put together a short write-up of some of the interesting ...
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Iceland Confirmed for Frankfurt Book Fair
According to Publisher’s Lunch: Iceland has formally signed on as the guest honor for the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2011. FBF director Jurgen Boos says in the announcement, “Iceland is one of the smallest book markets worldwide, but unbelievably productive. Literature has shaped the identity of this European ...
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Iceland at the Frankfurt Book Fair
The Literary Saloon has a link to this article from the Finnish press stating that Finland lost out to Iceland for 2011 Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Iris Schwanck, the director of the Finnish Literature Exchange (FILI) was informed on Wednesday of the negative decision by Jürgen Boos, the director of the ...
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Eleven Books, Selected
My parents are straight-up hoarders. Not of foodstuffs or other animal attractant stuff; nothing that will quite land them on a nightmare HGTV show (one that airs right after Flipanthropy), but hoarders nonetheless. Of paper, mostly. Checklists from the early 80s show up on the regular. I currently have a gym bag ca. 1993 ...
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Four Books for Women in Translation Month
Given that the posts over the past week plus have been very heavy on Open Letter and Dalkey Archive titles (*cough* and or exclusively about OL and DAP titles *cough*),, I thought I'd take a minute to point out a handful of Women in Translation books that I recently found out about and am adding to my "to read" ...
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Season 19 of TMR: “The Remembered Part” by Rodrigo Fresán & Will Vanderhyden
Are you ready? Like, really, ARE YOU READY? We announced this months ago, but given the size of this book and all of the various reading obligations Brian and I have respectively had (writing, editing, teaching for him; editing, teaching, and Iceland prep for me), we wanted to wait until we could give this book the attention ...
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An Echo Chamber of One [Sustainability]
Hello! I am ChadGPT, an AI chat generator that has been asked to produce a blog post in the style of Chad W. Post, about the future of publishing. After ingesting over a thousand articles from this website, literally hundreds of thousands of (mostly coherent) text messages, and zero email responses (apparently Chad is 100% ...
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Time Must Have a Stop
I haven't been feeling much like myself lately. Doubt anyone has, what with COVID time making everything take twice as long and be four times as frustrating, with Putin being, well, a massive, invasive dick, with inflation the highest it's been since I was five years old, and with no spring baseball. [UPDATE: Baseball is ...
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A Very Incomplete List of Books by Women in Translation in 2020 [#WITMonth]
I know that I'm a day behind—trying to make up for that right now—but my goal for Women in Translation Month 2020 is to post something each and every day of the month related to this topic. I'm inviting any and all readers, translators, publishers to contribute to this and, with a lot of luck a bit of work, we should have ...
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“Territory of Light” by Yuko Tsushima [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Kári Tulinius is an Icelandic poet and novelist. He and his family move back and forth between Iceland and Finland like a flock of migratory birds confused about the whole “warmer ...
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Lola Rogers on “The Colonel’s Wife” by Rosa Liksom [The Book That Never Was, Pt. 1]
The Colonel's Wife by Rosa Liksom, translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers (Graywolf Press) BookMarks Reviews: Five total—Four Positive, One Mixed Awards: None Number of Finnish Works of Fiction Published in Translation from 2008-2019: 65 (5.42/year) Number of Those Translations Written by Women: 40 of the ...
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Three Percent #176: Dirty Bookshop
After a bit of a hiatus, Chad and Tom return to talk about the two biggest things to happen during Winter Institute: The American Dirt controversy and the launch of Bookshop.org. If you haven't been following the American Dirt debacle, here are a couple pieces to read: Laura Miller's piece in Slate, Rebecca Alter's ...
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Save 40% AND Get a Free T-Shirt for Women in Translation Month
As we head into the final week of Women in Translation Month we wanted to remind you that you can get 40% off Open Letter titles written or translated by women. Including all forthcoming titles! Use promo code WITMONTH at checkout. And as a special bonus, for everyone who orders five or more titles from this collection ...
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Releasing Today: THE TRANSLATOR’S BRIDE by João Reis
“A neurotic little gem: fast, fun, frenzied, and feisty.” —Jeremy Garber, Powell's A humorous attempt to get one's life back in order that's part Thomas Bernhard, part Max Frisch At the start of The Translator's Bride, the Translator's bride ...
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Women in Translation for BTBA 2020
It's time for weekly BTBA posts! First up is one by Louisa Ermelino, who is the author of three novels; Joey Dee Gets Wise; The Black Madonna (Simon and Schuster); The Sisters Mallone (St. Martin’s Press) and a story collection, Malafemmina (Sarabande). She has worked ...
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Nordic Literature In Translation: A Huge Data Dump
As listeners to the Three Percent Podcast already know, last month I went on an editorial trip to Norway to meet with Norwegian publishers, agents, and authors, and to participate on a panel at the Lillehammer Book Festival. The panel ended up being a really enjoyable, wide-ranging discussion (which I will try and replicate ...
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TMR 8.09: CoDex 1962 (Pages 344-406)
We're into the homestretch! Today episode, featuring special guest Katie Whittemore, kicks off the discussion of the third and final volume of Sjón's CoDex 1962, "I'm a Sleeping Door: A Science-Fiction Story." More origin myths in this volume, ranging from the epic and literary, to the mundane and realistic. A woman gives ...
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TMR 8.07: CoDex 1962 (Pages 257-302)
This week's episode covers a lot of ground, from disturbing American racism circa 1917 to codswallop; from werewolves to parliamentary fights, from ghosts to crime/heist narratives. It's a really fun episode that has a good take on this section of the book mixed with some really fun segues and digressions. The next episode ...
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TMR 8.06: CoDex 1962 (Pages 199-256)
Chad and Brian break down the next few chapters of "Iceland's Thousand Years" by Sjón, which really set the plot in motion. They also talk about water, what it means to be an Icelander, how "bacon-eater" is an insult, Danes in general, myth-making, and much more. The next episode will focus on pages 257-302 (all in the ...
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TMR 8.05: CoDex 1962 (Pages 156-198)
Even without an expert to guide them, Chad and Brian dissect the end of the first volume of CoDex 1962, talking golems and tenderness, speculating about the film behind the narrator's eyes, evaluating origin myths (and their apocalyptic counterparts), and praising the overall narrative structure of "Thine Eyes Did See My ...
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TMR 8.04: CoDex 1962 (Pages 110-155)
Kári Tulinius joins Chad and Brian this week and provides some incredibly valuable insight into the translation itself, connections to Iceland and to other writings, and much much more. This is one of the most difficult parts of the book to read, given the horrific actions of one of the characters, but also points toward ...
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Öræfi: The Wasteland [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Keaton Patterson buys books for a living at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @Tex_Ulysses. Öræfi: The Wasteland by Ófeigur Sigurdsson, translated ...
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TMR 8.01: CoDex 1962 (Introduction)
The new season of the Two Month Review kicks off with a pretty wide-ranging discussion. Sure, there is a bit about Sjón (pronounced SYOHN, which is not how Chad says it) and a few things about his earlier books and CoDex 1962, but a good part of this introductory episode is about patterns in narrative, cinematic realism, ...
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CoDex 1962: Introduction
The podcast version of this will be live tomorrow morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch us talk about literature, Iceland, my silly theories, a mystery project, cinematic realism, and Game of Thrones. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and you can catch every Two Month Review episode before the official ...
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Season Eight of the Two Month Review: CODEX 1962 by Sjón
If you're a long-time listener to the Two Month Review podcast, or even a part-time follower of the Open Letter twitter, you've probably already heard that the next season of the podcast (it's eighth?!) is going to be all about Sjón's CoDex 1962. "Spanning eras, continents, and genres, CoDex 1962—twenty years in ...
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CoDex 1962 [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. George Carroll is a former bookseller and a West Coast representative for numerous publishers of translated literature. He is currently the curator ...
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The 2019 Best Translated Book Award Longlists
Although it doesn't seem like everyone believes me--I've gotten a few emails about titles that didn't make the Best Translated Book Award longlists, and one promoting a conspiracy theory that I am Adam Hetherington—I had no clear idea which titles made the BTBA longlists until they appeared on The Millions yesterday ...
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Why Are Ebooks [Let’s Talk about Catalonia]
Just like with last week's post, I want to kick off this mini-survey of a couple Catalan titles with a chart of the presses who have brought out the most Catalan translations (according to the Translation Database): My first response is: Thank god I finally realized how easy it is to change the color on these charts! I ...
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I Wrote Some Stuff in 2018
In some ways, this is long overdue, but just in time for the final post of the year, here's the complete collection of "articles" that I wrote this year for Three Percent. The initial plan was to do one a week, using a new translation as a launching pad to talk about international literature, publishing, and book culture, ...
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Books about Death [BTBA 2019]
Today's Best Translated Book Award post is from George Carroll, retired publisher rep living in Seattle, rooting for the Sounders, and kicking ass in our Fantasy Premier League league. In his preface to Best European Fiction 2016, Jon Fosse wrote “But crime fiction is not literature; it is the opposite of it . . . for ...
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In the Borderlands [BTBA 2019]
Today's BTBA post is from Sofia Samatar, author of A Stranger in Olondria and Assistant Professor at James Madison University. We agreed to spend several months in the borderlands. Every few weeks, each of us would send off a dispatch describing our experiences there, a report that might take any form we liked, we were ...
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My Struggle, Part I: Confusion and Value
As part of my "Deep Vellum Month" experiment, I decided to move from the toponymy—and topography—of Iceland to geography. Or rather, "geography," as in the Geography of Rebels by Maria Gabriela Llansol. Like with most of the books I've been reading of late, I knew basically nothing about this book before picking it ...
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Three Percent #145: Lobbying for No Celebrities
In response to a listener email, Tom expands on his comments from last podcast about the American Booksellers Association. Chad shares some data about genre works in translation and wonders about adding this to the Translation Database. He also has some curious info about Icelandic books in translation and then promotes one ...
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A Frozen Imagination
Over the course of the eleven years that Three Percent has existed, we've published approximately 300 posts about Iceland. We even held a special "Icelandic Week" when Iceland was Guest of Honor at the 2011 Frankfurt Book Fair. In addition to highlighting a ton of authors and musicians, we tried to record a Brennivín ...
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2018 BTBA Fiction Finalists
Suzanne by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, translated from the French by Rhonda Mullins (Canada, Coach House) Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson, translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith (Iceland, Open Letter ...
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“Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller” by Guðbergur Bergsson [Why This Book Should Win]
This afternoon’s entry in the “Why This Book Should Win” series is from writer and Russian translator, Andrea Gregovich. She also interviews literary translators about their new books for the Fiction Advocate blog. Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson, translated from Icelandic by Lytton Smith ...
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Death by Poetry and The Lies about Me
I have a litany of reasons for why I’m combining a few posts here and writing a shorter, more condensed, straightforward post than most of the others. Baby (always an excuse), other obligations—such as the Best Translated Book Award longlists announcement and a bachelor party in which “what happens in Boiceville, stays ...
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Best Translated Book Award 2018: Fiction Longlist
Incest by Christine Angot, translated from the French by Tess Lewis (France, Archipelago) Suzanne by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, translated from the French by Rhonda Mullins (Canada, Coach House) Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson, translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith (Iceland, ...
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Less Than Deadly Serious
Every spring, I teach a class on “World Literature & Translation” in which we read ~10 new translations, talk to as many of the translators as possible, and then the students have to choose one of the books to win their imaginary “Best Translated Book Award.” It’s a great exercise—trying to explain why they ...
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The Translation Industry Is Frozen
Before getting into the February translations, data on what’s being published (or not being published), and all the random stuff, I wanted to point out a few modifications to the Translation Database at Publishers Weekly that were recently implemented. First off, when you’re entering a title, you can now ...
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Two Month Review #2.10: 17, composition book (Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, Pages 361-411)
Here it is—the infamous LIVE recording of the Two Month Review! Chad and Lytton travelled all the way to Brooklyn to record this episode as part of the “Taste of Iceland Festivities.” As a result, they recap the book as a whole and reflect on the speech from Iceland’s First Lady that prefaced the ...
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Two Month Review #2.9: fourteen, fifteenth book, 16. notebook (Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, Pages 306-360)
Icelandic novelist and poet Kári Tulinius joins Chad and Lytton this week to talk about three of the darkest sections of Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller and the history of this novel’s reception in Iceland. They also talk about the recent scandal that brought down the Icelandic government—and how it ties into Tómas ...
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Two Month Review #2.8: this is the eleventh book, my 12th composition book, book 13 (Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, Pages 282-305)
CORRECTION: Throughout this podcast, we joke about having recorded the final episode of the season live at Spoonbill & Sugartown last weekend. This is a lie! The live event will take place THIS SATURDAY (September 30, 2017) as part of the Taste of Iceland events. Eliza Reid, Iceland’s First Lady, will start things ...
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Two Month Review #2.7: tenth composition book (Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, Pages 238-281)
This week Patrick Smith (Best Translated Book Award judge, The Scofield) joins Chad and Lytton to talk about this incredibly powerful section of the book, which raises all sorts of topical ideas about adhering to national myths and the problems of masculinity. This is also the section where Hitler shows up, and where a ...
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Two Month Review LIVE!!!
Over the next couple weeks, you’re going to hear me mess up this announcement on podcast after podcast, but on Saturday, September 30th at 3:30pm Lytton and I will be recording the final episode of the second season of the Two Month Review LIVE at Spoonbill & Sugartown in Brooklyn. This will be part of the ...
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Publisher Profile: Nordisk Books
Summer intern David M. Smith, translator from the Norwegian, 2017 ALTA Fellow, future guest on the Two Month Review, conducted this interview with Duncan Lewis of Nordisk Books. Proving there’s more to Scandinavia than macabre crime fiction (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and—hygge (always hygge), ...
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Two Month Review #2.4: fifth composition book, VI. (Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, Pages 69-139)
This week, Jacob Rogers—translator from the Galician and bookseller at Malaprop’s in Asheville, North Carolina—joins Chad and Lytton to talk about Tómas Jónsson’s next two “composition books.” Included in these sections are a long bit about the “board” and the general ...
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Perceived Humiliations, The Board, and the Dangers of Desire [Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller]
On this week’s Two Month Review podcast, we’ll be discussing the fifth composition book and VI (pages 69-139) from Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller. As a bit of preparation, below you’ll find some initial thoughts, observations, and quotes. You can also download this post as a PDF document. As always, ...
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Two Month Review #2.3: IV composition book (Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, Pages 32-68)
In this episode—covering Tómas Jónsson’s fourth composition book—a number of the themes of the overall novel are put on display: Tómas’s relationship to his body, the way he tries to create a narrative for himself, possible injustices he’s suffered during his life, the way his lodgers are like ...
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The Body, Biographies, and Workplace Injustice! [Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller]
On this week’s Two Month Review podcast, we’ll be discussing the IV composition book (pages 32-68) from Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller. As a bit of preparation, below you’ll find some initial thoughts, observations, and quotes. You can also download this post as a PDF document. As always, you can get ...
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Where (and When) Are We? [Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller]
On this week’s Two Month Review podcast, we’ll be discussing the Biography, first composition book, second book, and third composition book (pages 1-31) from Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller. As a bit of preparation, below you’ll find some initial thoughts, observations, and quotes. You can also download this ...
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Two Month Review #2.1: Introduction to Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller
And with this episode, we launch the second season of the Two Month Review! Over a ten-week period, we will be breaking down Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson, helping explain and explore what makes this book (often referred to as “Iceland’s Ulysses”) so influential and interesting. This ...
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"Tomás Jónsson, Bestseller" Release Day!
Fans of challenging, cerebral, modernist epics, rejoice! Today marks the official release date of Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller by Guðbergur Bergsson, a masterpiece of twentieth-century Icelandic literature, the fifth Icelandic work Open Letter has published to date. This is a book that is sure to launch a thousand ...
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Win a Copy of "Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller" by Gudbergur Bergsson from GoodReads!
As you may already know, Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, translated by Lytton Smith, is going to be the second Two Month Review title. This “season” will take place in August and September, but you can get a head start by winning a copy of the book through GoodReads. If you’re a GoodReads user, all you have to ...
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“Why This Book Should Win” So Far . . .
Unless someone surprises me with a new write-up, we don’t have any Why This Book Should Win posts for today. That leaves fifteen books to be covered next week, leading us right into the April 18th announcement of the BTBA fiction and poetry finalists. But for today, I thought I’d just post links to all twenty of the ...
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“Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was” by Sjón [Why This Book Should Win]
Between the announcement of the Best Translated Book Award longlists and the unveiling of the finalists, we will be covering all thirty-five titles in the Why This Book Should Win series. Enjoy learning about all the various titles selected by the fourteen fiction and poetry judges, and I hope you find a few to purchase and ...
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2017 Best Translated Book Award Fiction Longlist [BTBA 2017]
The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz, translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette (Egypt, Melville House) The Young Bride by Alessandro Baricco, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Italy, Europa Editions) Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya, translated from the Spanish by Jessica Powell (Dominican Republic, ...
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"Moonstone" by Sjón [BTBA 2017]
This week’s Best Translated Book Award post is by Mark Haber of Brazos Bookstore. For more information on the BTBA, “like” our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. And check back here each week for a new post by one of the judges. Small in size and epic in scale, Moonstone is Sjón’s fourth ...
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Call for Reviewers!
Three Percent is once again looking to expand its team of reviewers! If you’re interested in reviewing for Three Percent, please contact us at: submissions [at] openletterbooks.org. We’ve put together a quick list of titles we’d like to have reviewed at this time. Reviewers are not strictly limited to the books ...
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The Structural Inequality of Comp Titles
Although not as long as “last week’s post,” I would recommend downloading the PDF version. Besides, it just looks prettier in that format. Although the main point of this post is pretty general and obvious—the rich get richer by already being rich—it was inspired by some publishing-specific, ...
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Open Letter in 2016
Sure, the start of a new year is a good time to look to the future, make resolutions you’ll definitely break, and all of that, but it’s also a nice moment to reflect on the past twelve months. Rather than include all the things that happened with Open Letter last year—from the success of our 2nd Annual ...
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Open Letter Books to Receive $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
Rochester, NY—National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Jane Chu has approved more than $30 million in grants as part of the NEA’s first major funding announcement for fiscal year 2017. Included in this announcement is an Art Works grant of $40,000 to Open Letter Books for the publication of six works of international ...
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BTBA Favorites So Far by Jennifer Croft
This week’s post is by Jennifer Croft who is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN, MacDowell and National Endowment for the Arts grants and fellowships, as well as the Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation. She holds a PhD from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She is a founding editor of The ...
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"One of Us Is Sleeping" by Josefine Klougart [An Open Letter Book to Read]
This is the third entry in a series that will eventually feature all of the titles Open Letter has published to date. Catch up on past entries by clicking here. Last week’s entry was a pretty solid Chad rant involving the incredible Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin. Definitely check that one out. By contrast, this ...
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Three Funny Books [My Year in Lists]
Before getting into today’s lists, I want to draw your attention to Largehearted Boy’s List of ‘Best of 2015’ Book Lists.. This is just absurd—and it doesn’t even include all of these lists! Even if you eliminate all the entries on here that include Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant ...
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Amazon Continues to Make Translation Annoucements
New day, new Amazon press release related to literature in translation: AmazonCrossing, the literary translation imprint of Amazon Publishing, today announced a commitment to publish exceptional works of literature from Indonesian authors translated into English beginning in early 2016. The announcement coincides with ...
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Women in Translation, Part I: Fourteen Countries
Over the past few months, with the help of two fantastic interns, I’ve updated the Translation Database to include the sex of every author and translator in there.1 It was a brutal task, hunting down information about all of these people, scanning bios for gendered pronouns and then entering all of this into the ...
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Help Us Win the "Best of Rochester"!
OK, so about a month ago, the City Paper opened the first round of the voting for this year’s “Best of Rochester” feature. I posted on Facebook about how I wanted to get some Open Letter love this year. I suggested voting for a bunch of categories (Three Percent Podcast for “Best Local Podcast,” ...
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Three Percent #103: Back from Vacation to Rip on Jacket Copy
So after a month away, Chad and Tom are back, discussing the books they read over the summer and breaking down jacket copy for a number of recent books. They’re both astounded by how many meaningless phrases they come across (and references to how a book is “necessary”), and also talk about when and how to ...
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Australia vs. Cameroon [Women's World Cup of Literature: Quarterfinals]
From here on out, multiple judges will be voting on each of the matches and the “score” will be an accumulation of these votes. Just to recap, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (Australia) got here by first beating Sweden and Camilla Läckberg’s The Stranger and then upending Nigeria and Chimamanda Ngozi ...
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Australia vs. Sweden [Women's World Cup of Literature: First Round]
This match was judged by Rachel Crawford, graduate of the University of Rochester and former Open Letter intern. You can follow her rants online at @loveyourrac. For more information on the Women’s World Cup of Literature, click here or here. Also, be sure to follow our Twitter account and like our Facebook page. ...
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What Makes a Reader Good at Reading? [Some May Translations]
In a couple weeks, the IDPF Digital Book Conference will take place in New York under the theme of “Putting Readers First.” As part of this Ed Nawokta (Publishing Perspectives founder and international publishing guru of sorts), Boris Kachka (Hothouse author and former BEA frond-waver [sorry, inside joke]), Andrew ...
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RTWCS: Jón Gnarr with Lytton Smith
Come join Open Letter Books for another Reading the World Conversation Series event, featuring Jón Gnarr and translator Lytton Smith! Jón Gnarr is an actor, punk rocker, comedian, and author who created the satirical Best Party in Iceland and, against all odds, rose to became major of Reykjavík. He is one of the ...
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Latest Review: "The Indian" by Jón Gnarr
The latest addition to our Reviews section is a piece by P. T. Smith on Jón Gnarr’s The Indian, translated by Lytton Smith and out this month from Deep Vellum. Jón Gnarr is an actor, punk rocker, comedian, and author who created the satirical “Best Party” in Iceland and, against all odds, rose to become major of ...
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The Little Horse
The last five days of the eleventh-century Icelandic politician, writer of sagas, and famous murder victim Snorri Sturleleson (the Norwegian spelling, Snorre, is preserved in the book) make up Thorvald Steen’s most recently translated historical fiction, The Little Horse. Murdered on his own property for overdue political ...
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Latest Review: "The Little Horse" by Torvald Steen
The latest addition to our Reviews section is by P. T. Smith on Torvald Steen’s The Little Horse, translated by James Anderson and published by Seagull Books. Here’s the beginning of Patrick’s review: The last five days of the eleventh-century Icelandic politician, writer of sagas, and famous murder ...
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Cheesy Thanksgiving Post [Some December Translations]
I don’t think this particular monthly write-up needs any real explanation—it really is a “cheesy Thanksgiving post,” complete with holiday cheer and unwanted gifts—so let’s just get into it. (Also, I think it’s going to be really long.) Texas: The Great Theft by Carmen Boullosa, ...
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Milen Ruskov Wins the European Union Prize for Literature
Last week, during the Frankfurt Book Fair, the winners of this year’s European Union Prize for Literature were announced, and among the winners was Bulgaria’s Milen Ruskov, who also happens to be published by Open Letter. (Not terribly surprising, since we’ve cornered the market on Bulgarian literature in ...
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Why Won't English Speakers Read Translations?
I don’t know the answer to that, and neither does Hephzibah Anderson, writing for the BBC, but she does summarize some of the arguments related to publishing literature in translation, and gives up heaps of praise to Pushkin Press, along with Open Letter, Words Without Borders, and a few others. Some call it the ...
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South Asian Translations, and the Lack of Them
Over the past few weeks, Mahmud Rahman/Asymptote has been publishing a four-part series “On the Dearth of South Asian Translations in the U.S.” The whole series is worth reading, and below are a few key bits to whet your appetite . . . First off, from Part I: A small percentage of literary books published ...
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A 14-Hour Zen Koan Shoved Though My Soul [Some August Translations]
Another month, another preview that’s late. This month caught me a bit by surprise though—how is it possible that the new academic year starts in three weeks? It just doesn’t seem right. So in the spirit of “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essays, I thought I’d kick off this ...
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A Few Good Reviews
Over the past few days, a few great reviews for Open Letter authors popped up online, all of which are worth sharing and reading. First up is P.T. Smith’s review for Full Stop of Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson’s The Last Days of My Mother, translated from the Icelandic by Helga Soffía Einarsdóttir: As a ...
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July Newsletter (With Special Subscription Offer!)
If you don’t already subscribe to our (sporadic, but in good times, bi-weekly) newsletter, you can do so by clicking here. And if you missed the one that went out earlier this week, you can see the prettified version here, or just read it all below. The Last Days of My Mother “Pick of the Week” in Publishers ...
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Baltic Adventures [Some June 2014 Translations]
June started a few days ago, which means that my rambling monthly overview of forthcoming translations is overdue. It also means that World Cup 2014 is about to start, which means that for the next month my brain will be as filled with soccer tactics and outcomes as literary ideas . . . But sticking with the now: For the ...
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The Official Launch of Deep Vellum
Two summers ago, Will Evans (aka Bromance Will) came to Rochester for the summer to learn about how to launch his own press dedicated to international literature. Although he did help out at Open Letter by reading a bunch of manuscripts, editing High Tide, doing some marketing and publicity, and arranging a bunch of Frankfurt ...
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"The Whispering Muse" by Sjón [Why This Book Should Win]
We’re down to the last three longlisted titles, so we’re going to have to cram these in before Tuesday morning’s announcement of the fiction and poetry finalists. I’ll be writing the first two, Bromance Will will bring it home tomorrow evening. The Whispering Muse by Sjón, translated from the ...
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Sleet By Stig Dagerman – Why This Book Should Win
Elizabeth Harris’s translations from Italian include Mario Rigoni Stern’s novel Giacomo’s Seasons (Autumn Hill Books) and Giulio Mozzi’s story collection, This Is the Garden (Open Letter Books). She has won a 2013 Translation Prize from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Culture (Rome) for Rigoni Stern’s Giacomo’s ...
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BTBA 2014 Fiction Longlist: It's Here!
The wait is over. Listed below are the twenty-five titles on this year’s Best Translated Book Award Fiction Longlist. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be highlighting each and every one of these as part of the annual “Why This Book Should Win the BTBA” series. It’s a fun way of learning about ...
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The AWP of Bubbles, Balloons, and Lonely Hipsters [Some March 2014 Translations]
Last weekend, over 14,000 writers, publishers, agents, translators, reviewers, professors, and readers swarmed the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle for the annual Associated Writing Programs conference—four days of heavy drinking, pot-chocolate (it’s legal in Washington!), endless craft panels, a ...
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BTBA 2014: Fiction Longlist Predictions!
At this moment in time, I have no idea what books are on the Best Translated Book Award longlist. The judges are still conferring—in fact, I’m not even certain that the list of 25 has been finalized . . . Which means that it’s a great time to start spreading rumors about what books are in and which are out. ...
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Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2014: The Longlist
Next Tuesday we’ll be announcing the 25-title Best Translated Book Award longlist, which makes today’s announcement of the IFFP longlist even that more intriguing . . . Although there are different eligibility rules between the two prizes—and different books published in the UK vs. the U.S.—there often ...
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Stephen Sparks Goes Around the World with BTBA
Stephen Sparks is a buyer at Green Apple Books. He lives in San Francisco and blogs at Invisible Stories. Poorly detailed Google map With the longlist set to be announced in a matter of days—just this morning the judges received the (top secret!) results of our initial vote to narrow down all eligible books to a ...
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2013 Albums I Like Listening To [Chad's Picks]
This is usually the section of my Music of the Past Year roundup post where I go on and on about how much easier it is to discover music than it is to discover books. Although I still feel the same way—right now I’m listening to the new El Ten Eleven EP thanks to an email from Spotify I received this morning; ...
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2013 Music! [Kaija's Picks]
Because we at Open Letter value deadlines and all things timely, I’m going to keep this short and sweet1 and over a month late to bring to you my ten Best Of 2013 album/song/music picks. As I mentioned on the podcast, I had a particularly hard time choosing 10 albums as a whole (which I cheat on anyway) because there ...
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The Thaw
Short story collections, whether collected over a period of time or written specifically as a set, often have a way of revealing an author’s preoccupation, and Ólafur Gunnarsson’s The Thaw is no different. Throughout its ten stories, we see the same themes turned to time and time again: ambiguity overlaying points of ...
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The Snow Day Edition [Some January Translations]
Along with about, well, everyone else in the northeast, I’m snowed into my apartment today, so instead of answering the phones at Open Letter (HA! no one ever calls us), I’m at home, working on our forthcoming anthology of Spanish literature, A Thousand Forests in One Acorn, and, as a break of sorts, I thought ...
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Dutch Treats
Michael Orthofer runs the Complete Review – a book review site with a focus on international fiction – and its Literary Saloon weblog. One of the many interesting things about judging the Best Translated Book Award is the sense it gives you of what (and how much) is actually being translated into English (and ...
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Four Titles from the Big Stacks
Sarah Gerard is a writer who used to work at McNally Jackson Books, but recently took a job at BOMB Magazine. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Bookforum, the Paris Review Daily, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Slice Magazine, and other publications. Her new book, “Things I Told My ...
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Typographical Era's Translation Award
In response to the incredibly lame GoodReads Choice Awards (and yes, I’m totally voting for Jodi Picoult in the fiction category), Typographical Era launched their own Translation Award: It all started when I asked a simple question on Twitter yesterday. Why in the HELL do the GoodReads Choice Awards not have a ...
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Denmark Recap
With the Frankfurt Book Fair literally around the corner, it seemed appropriate to post something about the most recent trip (don’t worry, Iceland, Chad’s got your back for a recap) we took in the name of bringing great world literature to an international audience. Just over a week ago, Chad and I had the ...
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MatchBook is NOT a Dating Service for Readers
Amazon made a couple of announcements yesterday that, as Amazon announcements tend to do, set the book world atwitter. They announced the next version of the Kindle, but the news that really generated the headlines was the announcement of “MatchBook.”1 Amazon has unveiled a new US initiative to bundle print ...
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The Book of Emotions
João Almino’s The Book of Emotions is the prototypical Dalkey Archive book. Not that all of Dalkey’s books are the same, but there is a certain set of criteria that a lot of their titles have—and which Almino’s novel has in spades: It’s a book about someone trying to write a book. From Mulligan Stew to At ...
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Why Bury the Lede? AmazonCrossing Publishes More Books in Translation than Anyone Else (In 2013. Probably.)
For everyone interested in the state of literature in translation today, I just posted updates to the 2012 Translation Database and the 2013 one. First things first: In 2012, AmazonCrossing published more works of fiction and poetry in translation than any other press except for Dalkey Archive, and is the largest publisher ...
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The Whispering Muse
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve seen this sort of thing before in Ovid, Bulgakov, Kafka, and ...
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Latest Review: "The Whispering Muse" by Sjón
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is by Vincent Francone on The Whispering Muse by Sjón, from Farrar Straus and Giroux. The first time I saw The Whispering Muse was in a bookstore in Riga, Latvia, misplaced somewhere on the D-F shelf. Taking this as a sign of meant-to-be, I bought it, and promptly placed it on my ...
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LoveStar
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can recall such a time.) He noted as much himself in a recent interview with The ...
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Latest Review: "LoveStar" by Andri Snær Magnason
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is by Larissa Kyzer on LoveStar by Andri Snær Magnason, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb and published by Seven Stories Press. Larissa is a regular contributor to Three Percent, and with this continues her streak of Nordic lit reviews. LoveStar is a book I’ve ...
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Why This Book Should Win: "Transit" by Abdourahman A. Waberi [BTBA 2013]
As in years past, we will be highlighting all 25 titles on the BTBA Fiction Longlist, one by one, building up to the announcement of the 10 finalists on April 10th. A variety of judges, booksellers, and readers will write these, all under the rubric of “Why This Book Should Win. You can find the whole series by clicking ...
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Blindly
A few pages into Claudio Magris’s Blindly, the reader begins to ask the same question posed by the book’s jacket: “Who is the mysterious narrator of Blindly?” Who indeed. At times the narrator is Tore, an inmate in a mental health facility. Other times, the narration is handled by Jorgen Jorgenson, king of Iceland, ...
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Latest Review: "Blindly" by Claudio Magris
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Vincent Francone on Claudio Magris’s Blindly, which is translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel and published by Yale University Press as part of their Margellos World Republic of Letters Series. Yale’s World Republic of Letters Series deserves a ...
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Nate's Favorite Albums of 2012 [Music Podcast]
As a supplement to this week’s “Favorite Music of 2012” podcast, we’ll be posting top 10 album lists from all four participants over the course of the day. Here’s Nate’s list. Best Album from Late-2011, but It Still Counts ‘Cause I Say So Tom Waits, Bad As Me Like Tom Waits? ...
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Chad's Favorite Albums of 2012 [Music Podcast]
As a supplement to this week’s “Favorite Music of 2012” podcast, we’ll be posting top 10 album lists from all four participants over the course of the day. I guess I’m up first. Album That Takes Me Back to High School Days Japandroids, Celebration Rock The Japandroids have popped up on a few ...
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Thank You, National Endowment for the Arts!
The first set of Art Works grants from the NEA were announced this morning, and I’m incredibly giddy about the fact that Open Letter was awarded $45,000 for the following: To support the publication and promotion of books in translation and the continuation of the translation website Three Percent. Works from ...
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Kirkus's Best Fiction of 2012 List Featuring TWO Open Letter Titles
Now that Cyber Monday is underway, it’s about time for the “Best of Everything!!!” lists to start coming out. (Or, as documented at Largehearted Boy, continue coming out.) Personally, I fricking love these sorts of lists, to find books/albums that I need to check out, and to serve as fodder for my anger . . ...
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I'll Take Some of It Back [IMPAC 2013]
Every year, the insanely long longlist is announced for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and every year I make fun of the award, mainly for the number of titles in contention (154 this year), and the aesthetic shittiness of their website. Until now. There are still about 100 titles too many on the longlist, ...
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From the Mouth of the Whale
Sjón’s From the Mouth of the Whale has been well received by readers and critics. Junot Díaz has called the book “achingly brilliant – an epic made mad, made extraordinary.” A.S. Byatt gave it a hearty endorsement in The Guardian. Such praise for the book is well deserved. The book’s prose is lovely and its ...
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Latest Review: "From the Mouth of the Whale" by Sjón
The latest review to our Reviews Section is a piece by Brian Libgober on Sjón’s From the Mouth of the Whale, which Victoria Cribb translated from the Icelandic and is available from Telegram Books. Sjón was born in Reykjavik in 1962. He won the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize (the equivalent of the Man Booker ...
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Children in Reindeer Woods
In Children in Reindeer Woods, Kristín Ómarsdóttir, who is also a playwright, presents an interesting reflection on war. On what is introduced as a peaceful day, three paratroopers invade the temporary home for children where Billie lives and kill everyone except Billie right in front of her. Unexpectedly, one soldier ...
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Latest Review: "Children in Reindeer Woods" by Kristín Ómarsdóttir
The latest review to our Reviews Section is a piece by Aleksandra Fazlipour on Kristín Ómarsdóttir’s Children in Reindeer Woods, which Lytton Smith translated from the Icelandic and is available from Open Letter. This is the first book of Kristín Ómarsdóttir’s to be translated into English, and it received ...
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The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning
Former soldier and current hitman for the Croatian mafia in New York, Tomislav Bokšić, nicknamed Toxic, has dispatched roughly 125 people. It’s a fully ingrained way of life for Toxic—he feels “restless if three months go by without firing a gun”—and takes pride in his professionalism. As a “triple ...
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Latest Review: "The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning" by Hallgrímur Helgason
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Larissa Kyzer on Hallgrímur Helgason’s The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning, which AmazonCrossing brought out this past January. It may be due to my Icelandic Crush, but of all the books AmazonCrossing has brought out so far, this is the one that most ...
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"Most Beauteous Non-Prostitution Woman in Shortest Dress" [FuckyeahEurovision!]
After a minor hiatus, Janis Stirna is back with his on-going preview of the Eurovision. The semi-finals start next Tuesday (5/22), and he promised me he’d cover all the entries before the finals along with all his yes/no votes on who will make it to the finals. Hello my friends. If You are here today this is ...
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Copenhagen Noir
Although the current social and political landscape of Denmark make it a natural setting for contemporary crime writing, the country has, until recently, remained in the shadow of its Nordic neighbors in this respect. This is not to say that Denmark is lacking authors of mysteries, crime stories, and thrillers of all ...
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Latest Review: "Copenhagen Noir" edited by Bo Tao Michaelis
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by regular reviewer Larissa Kyzer on Copenhagen Noir, edited by Bo Tao Michaelis and translated by Mark Kline (with one lone translation from the Swedish by Lone Thygesen) and published by Akashic Books. As Larissa notes at the start of her review, this is one of the ...
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Because "Quinquennial" Is Such a Cool Word [Nordic Conference]
Just received this call for papers for the 2013 Nordic Translation Conference taking place at the University of East Anglia next April and thought I’d share it, since a) some of you might be interested in attending, and b) because this is a quinquennial event, and that sounds awesome. Deadline is in August, so you ...
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Stig Sæterbakken (1966-2012)
As noted on the Dalkey Archive website, Norwegian author Stig Sæterbakken took his own life this past Tuesday. Sæterbakken was the author of the novels Incubus, The New Testament, Siamese, Self-Control, and Sauermugg (the latter three constituting the “S-trilogy”), and two collections of essays, Aesthetic ...
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Latest Review: "Mister Blue" by Jacques Poulin
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by contributing reviewer Larissa Kyzer on Jacques Poulin’s Mister Blue, which just came out from Archipelago Books in Sheila Fischman’s translation. Larissa Kyzer is a regular reviewer for us who has a great interest in all things Scandinavian and Icelandic. ...
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The Greenhouse
2011 has been a banner year for Icelandic literature on the international stage. “Fabulous Iceland” was this year’s guest of honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and in August, UNESCO named the Reykjavík as one of its five Cities of Literature—the only such city where English is not the native language. Perhaps even ...
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Latest Review: "The Greenhouse" by Audur Ava Olafsdottir
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Larissa Kyzer on Audur Ava Olafsdottir’s The Greenhouse, which is available from AmazonCrossing in Brian FitzGibbon’s translation from the Icelandic. As Larissa—one of our excellent contributing reviewers, who loves the Scandinavian and is starting ...
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The Three Percent Problem & Local News
This morning, I was on our local morning show (the one that we’re generally on, which is most likely the only local news program in the whole U.S. to have featured authors from both Croatia and Iceland), to talk about The Three Percent Problem. The conversation kind of meanders, but I’m very glad that I was able ...
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From the Sublime to the Ridiculous [FuckyeahEurovision!]
As anyone with a heightened sense of irony already knows, tomorrow the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest Finals will take place. For the poor few out there who aren’t keyed into this annual event of epic nationalist absurdity, basically, this is Europe’s version of American Idol, but with even shittier songs ...
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PEN America #14: The Good Books
The new issue of PEN America, PEN’s literary journal, came out during last week’s World Voices Festival. As always, it’s loaded with good stuff, including excerpts of Marcelo Figueras’s Kamatchka, Andrzej Sosnowski’s Lodgings, Herve Le Tellier’s erotic as hell The Sextine Chapel, and Quim ...
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2011 Nordic Council Literature Prize [Other Awards: Part III]
As announced yesterday, Icelandic author Gyrðir Elíasson has won the 2011 Nordic Council Literature Prize for his short story collection Milli trjánna. From the Adjudicating Committee (! — great name . . . we don’t use the word “adjudicating” near enough in our modern vernacular): “The ...
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Asymptote Journal
Announcing the launch of ASYMPTOTE, a new international literary journal dedicated to the art and practice of translation. Founded out of Singapore, with editors scattered across the globe, ASYMPTOTE offers a well-calibrated window on world literature, in all its forms. Issue Jan 2011 features original essays by ...
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A Special Message from Three Percent & Open Letter Books
Dear Readers, Over this past year we’ve been working so hard that we sometimes forget to look up and take stock of all we’ve accomplished. The year started with an exceptional profile in the New York Times that nurtured, more than we could have imagined, a widespread awareness of Three Percent and Open ...
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Translation as Literary Ambassador
Last year around this time, Larry Rohter wrote this amazing piece about the mission of Open Letter and the need for literature in translation. Which did wonders for our reputation and subscription program, and was one of the coolest pieces of publicity we’ve ever received. Well, as the holidays roll back around, ...
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Fake Poets, Falsely Translated [Promoting The Ambassador]
As some of you might know, Bragi Olafsson’s new book — The Ambassador — released a couple weeks back. It’s an incredibly fun book centering around the journey of Icelandic poet Sturla Jon Jonsson to poetry festival in Lithuania where he loses his overcoat, steals someone else’s, is accused of ...
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Bragi Olafsson at 192 Books
Where: 192 Books, 192 Tenth Ave. (at 21st St.), NYC (please RSVP by calling 212.255.4022) Sturla Jón Jónsson, the fifty-something building superintendent and sometimes poet, has been invited to a poetry festival in Vilnius, Lithuania, appointed, as he sees it, as the official representative of the people of Iceland to ...
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The World on Our Bookshelves: The Import of Literature in Translation
Where: Pages & Places Festival, ArtWorks, 503 Lackawanna Avenue, Scranton, PA America is a prolific creator of writers. The world’s first degree-granting creative writing program came into being in Iowa City, Iowa, in 1937, and now some 400 such programs offer undergraduate and/or graduate degrees, each turning out a ...
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Bragi Ólafsson @ The Scandinavia House
Where: Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue (@ 38th Street), New York, NY Sturla Jón Jónsson, the fifty-something building superintendent and sometimes poet, has been invited to a poetry festival in Vilnius, Lithuania, appointed, as he sees it, as the official representative of the people of Iceland to the field of poetry. ...
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Bragi Olafsson's Upcoming Events & Giveaway
As you may already know, Bragi Olafsson’s new novel, The Ambassador, is releasing next month. It’s an awesome, hilarious, fun novel about an Icelandic poet who attends a poetry festival in Lithuania, where his coat is stolen, where he gets pretty wasted, and where he meets a bunch of eccentric poets (surprise?). ...
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The Winter 2010 Open Letter Catalog
As some people have noticed, our new Winter 2010 catalog is now available and listed on the Open Letter website.. Totally biased, but I think this is one of our strongest seasons yet, what with Zone, the new Bragi Olafsson novel, the first of a million or so Juan Jose Saer books (one of my absolute favorites! If you ...
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Susan Sontag Prize Award Winners
Another day, another post that should’ve been written weeks ago . . . (In case you haven’t noticed, today is themed. And this extends beyond the blog to responding to dozens of e-mails I should’ve responded to way back when.) Last month, the Susan Sontag Foundation announced that Benjamin Mier-Cruz won the 2010 award ...
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Off to Bulgaria . . .
Taking off in just a few minutes for Bulgaria to participate in the translation related part of this year’s Sozopol Fiction Workshop, which is sponsored by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing. This seminar brings together English and Bulgarian writers for three days of workshops, guest lectures, and ...
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New European Fiction [PEN World Voices]
This post originally appeared here on the official PEN World Voices blog. I still have 2-3 to write . . . Granta editor and former NBCC president John Freeman opened up this event talking about how Best European Fiction 2010 served as a sort of print version of the PEN World Voices Festival. Containing something like 40 ...
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Nordic Council Literature Prize 2010 Nominations
The nominations for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2010 were announced yesterday: Denmark Peter Laugesen Fotorama (Photorama) Poetry collection, Forlaget Borgen 2009 Ida Jessen Børnene (The Children) Novel, Forlaget Gyldendal 2009 Finland Sofi Oksanen Puhdistus (Purge) Novel, WSOY 2008 Monika ...
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How to Sell Books in France (Part III of the Study Trip Posts)
OK, so despite my best efforts, I don’t really have an overarching design to all of these posts about the study trip. I do have ideas about what I’m going to write about tomorrow (good/bad of eBooks and pricing) and on Friday (authors and business models), but I can’t actually imagine that reading these from ...
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French Study Trip
We’ll have a few other sorts of posts going up this week (like maybe, finally, a few new book reviews—this fall has been rather rough on our schedule, but I have pieces in the works on Anonymous Celebrity by Ignacio de Loyola Brandao, The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, and Running Away by Jean-Philippe Toussaint), but ...
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Independent Indian Publishers Join Forces
This post originally appeared on the Frankfurt Book Fair blog. I highly recommend visiting the official blog for interesting posts from Richard Nash, Alex Hippisley-Cox, and Arun Wolf In order to better promote works of Indian literature and independent Indian presses, a number of publishers are talking about joining forces ...
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Scandinavian Literature in Translation
This is a bit of a self-indulgent post, but yesterday I received a copy of the Bog Markedet, a Danish book trade magazine, that contains an article I wrote on the surprising success of Scandinavian literature in English translation. Since most of the people I know can’t actually read Danish, I thought I’d reprint ...
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Susan Sontag Foundation Crushes on My Crushes
The call for submissions for the 2010 Susan Sontag Prize for Translation was posted last week, and this year the focus is on translations from Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic. This prize was launched two years ago to encourage the development of young literary translators. Applicants must be under the age of 30 ...
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Speaking at the Speed of Print
Anyone who’s met me knows that I can, on occasion, speak a bit fast. Almost incomprehensibly fast. Especially if English isn’t your first language . . . This “talent” kind of came in handy at the 21st Century Publishing Symposium at the Reykjavik International Literary Festival last week. The symposium ...
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Goodbye Rochester, Hello Reykjavik
In just a couple of hours I’m taking off for the Reykjavík International Literary Festival, which kicked off on Sunday with readings by Steinar Bragi (whose novel Women sounds great), Johan Harstad, Bergtóra Hanusardóttir, Luis López Nieves, and Junot Díaz. Very interesting mix of Icelandic and international ...
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Tomorrow's E-Utopia? [Part 4 of 4]
Here’s the final part of the paper I’m preparing for the Iceland Literary Festival. Click here for part one and here for part two and here for part three. Again, please pass along any comments/suggestions you might have—in no way is this essay fixed in stone. (I’m sure there are a million minor typos ...
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Tomorrow's E-Utopia? [Part 3 of 4]
Here’s the third part of the paper I’m preparing for the Iceland Literary Festival. Click here for part one and here for part two. The last section—the part that’s critical of the e-future—will go up over the weekend. Now we’re back to e-books: What’s quicker than right-fucking-now? ...
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Tomorrow's E-Utopia? [Part 2 of 4]
Here’s the second section of the paper I’m preparing for the Iceland Literary Festival. Click here for part one. The third part will go up later today, and the fourth over the weekend. Let me back up a bit to give a broader context for how e-books hold some promise to revolutionize the business of publishing ...
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Tomorrow's E-Utopia? [Part 1 of 4]
Next week I’m going to be in Reykjavik for the Icelandic Literary Festival, where I’ve been asked to give a brief speech on e-books and translations. In preparation I’ve written something that’s far far too long for the speech . . . But, I thought I’d run it here over the weekend, giving me the ...
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Bragi Olafsson in the L.A. Times
While I was gone last week, Michael Shaub blogged about Bragi Ólafsson’s The Pets for Jacket Copy: With its 99.9% literacy rate (seriously), and a roster of great authors (Halldór Laxness, Hallgrímur Helgason) that belies the fact that it has a smaller population than Bakersfield, the nation of Iceland could ...
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European Union Prize for Literature
The first twelve winners of the European Union Prize for Literature were announced earlier this week with the aim of bringing increased attention to the contemporary European literature. This is a bit of an odd prize—each year an award is given to one author from 11 or 12 of the various EU countries. The list of ...
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Recent Reviews of The Pets
Bragi Olafsson’s The Pets came out a few months ago, but with Iceland and its overturned government in the news these days, it’s a pretty good time for reviews to be appearing . . . Just this week two new reviews came out, the first being Lara Tupper’s piece in The Believer, which puts Olafsson’s novel ...
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Latest Review: The Blue Fox by Sjon
Our latest review is of Sjon’s The Blue Fox, which was translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb and published last year by Telegram Books. Sounds interesting, even if our reviewer Phillip Witte has some mixed feelings: I picked up The Blue Fox on a continuing kick for Icelandic literature having recently ...
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The Blue Fox
I picked up The Blue Fox on a continuing kick for Icelandic literature having recently finished Bragi Olafsson’s The Pets (published by Open Letter). I was pleased to see a cover-commendation from Icelandic singer Björk, whose association with the author, Sjón, is through several projects including the 2000 film Dancer in ...
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Vice Magazine and John Calder
I have to thank Dan Visel for bringing this to my attention. Until he e-mailed me, I hadn’t looked at Vice magazine in quite some time. But what a fiction issue! Heinrich von Kleist’s The Earthquake in Chile (forthcoming from Archipelago), an interesting list of recommendations from writers who are also teachers, ...
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The Great Weaver from Kashmir
By Halldór Laxness Translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton Archipelago Three Percent’s
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Best Translated Book 2008 Longlist: The Great Weaver from Kashmir by Halldor Laxness
For the next several weeks we’ll be highlighting a book-a-day from the 25-title Best Translated Book of 2008 fiction longlist, leading up to the announcement of the 10 finalists. Click here for all previous write-ups. The Great Weaver from Kashmir by Halldor Laxness, translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton. ...
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December Frankfurt Book Fair Newsletter
The December Issue of the Frankfurt Book Fair Newsletter is now available online and includes a number of interesting pieces. The article on the 10th Anniversary of the German Book Office, which highlights the difficulties of getting German titles published in English translation and the job the GBO is doing to make this ...
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Best Translated Book of 2008: The Fiction Longlist
After weeks of reading, researching, voting, taking recommendations, discussing, and passionately defending, we’ve finally come up with our 25-title fiction longlist for the “Best Translated Book of 2008:” The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn ...
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Latest Review: The Tsar's Dwarf
Larissa Kyzer’s write-up of Danish author Peter Fogtdal’s The Tsar’s Dwarf is the latest addition to our review section. It’s fitting that Larissa would be the one to review this—in addition to reviewing for The L Magazine and working towards her Master’s in Library Science, she’s ...
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New European Poets
Where is that wild and endemic high-heeled shoe Europe . . . ? — Branko Cegec (translated from the Croatian by Miljenko Kovacicek) It is difficult to get beyond the novelty inherent in the New European Poets project. Its remarkable scope, breadth and depth show-cases 290 poets representing 45 nations, all ...
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Omnivoracious w/ Bragi
Omnivoracious, Amazon.com’s weblog, has an interview with Bragi Ólafsson about The Pets, lies, and his new book: Amazon.com: Tell me more about that, what that was like. BÓ: Most of the time it was very stupid questions and silly answers. That’s what the pop press is basically about. Playing around. ...
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Latest Review: The Great Weaver from Kashmir
It seems fitting that we run this review of Iceland’s only Nobel Prize winner right after the Le Clezio announcement, and while Bragi Olafsson (our Icelandic author) is on his reading tour. Larissa Kyzer—who reviewed The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo for us last month—wrote this review of the first Halldor ...
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The Great Weaver from Kashmir
If the international community recognizes Iceland for something other than Björk, vikings, and glaciers, it is undeniably the country’s historic and richly diverse literary tradition. Deemed by the Swedish Academy to be the “cradle of narrative art here in the North,” Iceland not only has the legacy of the ...
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Bragi on the Morning News
Once again, Rochester’s local morning news proved to be one of the most unique TV programs in American history, following a visit by a Croatian literary writer with a visit by an Iceland literary writer. (Has there ever been a case when a general news show interviewed two international authors over a two-week ...
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This Week's Events
This week is probably going to be another slow one for Three Percent, but for good reason. Bragi Olafsson is in town and we’ve stacked up a number of events and readings, beginning tonight. Here’s his official schedule: Reading and Discussion on Monday, October 6th, 8pm Karpeles Manuscript Library 220 North St. ...
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Full Interview with Bragi Olafsson
We conducted this interview a few months ago, but thought we’d run it in its entirety today, since his book is now available and will be shipping to bookstores in the very near future. Bragi Ólafsson was born in Reykjavik, and may be most well known for playing bass in The Sugarcubes, Björk’s first band. After ...
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And Now There Are Two
This morning, the second Open Letter book arrived — The Pets by Bragi Olafsson. Just last week, Kirkus reviewed this, giving it the most positive review I’ve read in quite some time: Icelandic novelist Ólafsson’s English-language debut is part Beckettian or even Kafkaesque black comedy, part ...
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More September Translations
As an update, at this moment I have records for 314 original translations of adult fiction and poetry coming out in 2008, and 28 for 2009. (I’ve barely started entering 2009 info . . .) As part of our goal to highlight as many of these titles as possible, below are capsules on a few more translations coming out this ...
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A Public Space: Issue 6
The new issue of A Public Space arrived a couple days ago and, as always, is filled with interesting pieces. I think it’s pretty cool that “All Foreigners Beep” from Dubravka Ugresic’s new collection Nobody’s Home leads off the issue, especially since this is one of the funniest pieces in the ...
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Comma's Short Fiction in Translation Series
This is actually old news—like more than a year old—but thanks to Bragi Olafsson I just found out about Comma Press’s Short Fiction in Translation program. Thanks to funding from the European Culture Programme, ‘Culture 2007’ and Arts Council England, the new imprint will include four ...
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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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Bragi Olafsson's The Pets and Open Letter Subscriptions
Yesterday, over at Booksquare there was an interesting post on “Why Publishers Should Blog,” that generated a bit of discussion: Just as authors need to better market themselves and their books, so do publishers. While the audience for a publisher website is diverse — authors, booksellers, journalists, ...
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More from Lawrence Venuti about Literature in Translation
A couple weeks ago we linked to Lawrence Venuti’s article on Words Without Borders about the business of publishing translations. It’s a very interesting piece that was written for a panel on the To Be Translated or Not To Be report and puts forth a somewhat provocative stance on what should be published in ...
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Open Letter Fall 2008 Catalog
In some ways it’s a bit early to be posting our fall catalog (especially since the launch of the official Open Letter website is a few weeks off), but I recently got a number of requests for information about our first six titles, so I thought it would be easiest just to post a pdf version. Click here for the ...
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To Be Translated or Not To Be: Part III
Continuing our series on the PEN/Ramon Llull To Be Translated or Not To Be report (previous posts can be found here), today I want to write a bit about the second essay in the book—Simona Skrabec’s “Literary Translation: The International Panorama.” Complementing Esther Allen’s introductory ...
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To Be Translated or Not To Be: Part I
At Frankfurt last year, PEN and the Institut Ramon Llull released a report entitled To Be Translated or Not To Be regarding the “international situation of literary translation.” This report (which is downloadable in pdf format by clicking the link above) has gotten some decent attention online and is one of the ...
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January Translations: Fiction (Update)
After posting the initial list of January translations yesterday, I got info about three titles I missed (see below). I’m sure there are a few more, so if you know of anything, please feel free to post it here or contact me. Also, I’ll put up the poetry translations later today, and literary nonfiction tomorrow, ...
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Halldor Laxness in L.A. Times
On the occasion of the rerelease of The Fish Can Sing, Richard Raynor’s monthly Paperback Writers column features a nice overview of Iceland’s best-known writer, Halldor Laxness: This 1957 novel is narrated by the orphan Alfgrimur Hansson, who tells, in a meandering way, of his relationship with the ...
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Nordic Translation Conference
This sounds like it could be an interesting conference: The Nordic Translation Conference will take place March 6, 7, and 8, 2008, at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies in London. This will be the first conference of its kind, the first to focus solely on the Nordic languages and their translation. The ...
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Bernard Scudder
The Guardian mourns the death of Icelandic-English translator Bernard Scudder… Translators are the neglected stepchildren of literature, considered lucky if they get their names on a book’s title page or receive a small share of an award. This state of affairs was never more apparent than earlier this month, ...
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Now That's Marketing
From PW: William Morrow publicist Danielle Bartlett wanted to promote the U.S. debut of popular Icelandic novelist Yrsa Sigurdardottir by doing an in-flight book signing of her murder mystery, Last Rituals. She contacted Icelandair’s media relations manager Debbie Scott. From there, the idea morphed into a four-day ...
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Finalists for the 2008 Nordic Literature Prize
The twelve finalists for the Nordic Literature Prize were announced yesterday. Among the nominees are Icelandic author Bragi Olafsson for The Ambassador (Open Letter is publishing his book The Pets next fall), and Norwegian author Carl Frode Tiller for Encircling. (Tiller also recently won the Brage prize for the best ...
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I'll Second That
From Reuters: Iceland has overtaken Norway as the world’s most desirable country to live in, according to an annual U.N. table published on Tuesday that again puts AIDS-afflicted sub-Saharan African states at the bottom. And in case you’re curious, the U.S. came in 12th. That’s 8 slots behind ...
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Reykjavík International Literature Festival 2007
The Reykjavik Lit Festival runs from September 9th through the 15th, and the full schedule of events is available online. As pointed out in this overview, the “biggest” international name is Coetzee, but personally I’d love to see the events with Bragi Olafsson (Open Letter will be publishing his novel ...
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Guardian World Literature Tour: Ireland
This month the Guardian World Literature Tour focuses on Ireland. Here’s their summary of how the tour works: And, as it’s been a while since the tour last stopped by, here’s a quick reminder of how it works. It goes like this: every few weeks we post asking for suggestions of the best books and authors ...
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