Issue 15 of Quarterly Conversation

Seems to me like The Quarterly Conversation is getting better and better with every issue . . . The most recent one (which just went online over the weekend) has some great cover features, including a piece from the editors On the Demise of Publishing, Reading, and Everything Else, a (aforementioned) review of Mathias Enard’s Zone, and An Intro to E-Lit, which references University of Rochester grad N. Katherine Hayles’s most recent book, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary.

In addition to these longer pieces, there are a ton of reviews of books in translation in this issue. Here’s a sampling:

• My Father’s Wives by Jose Eduardo Agualusa, reviewed by our own E.J. Van Lanen;

• Ghosts by Cesar Aira, reviewed by Scott Bryan Wilson;

• Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra, reviewed by Elizabeth Wadell;

• Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction, reviewed by Scott Esposito;

• Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov and White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov both translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz and reviewed by Karen Vanuska;

• The Fat Man and Infinity & Other Writings by Antonio Lobo Antunes, which I reviewed;

• The Assignment by Friedrich Durrenmatt, reviewed by Jordan Anderson;

• Happy Families by Carlos Fuentes, reviewed by Meg Sefton;

• Woods and Chalices by Tomaz Salamun, reviewed by Levi Stahl; and

• Five Spice Street by Can Xue, reviewed by John Madera.

Phew. A very impressive list of titles . . . There aren’t many review sources out there (in print or online) that are doing such a comprehensive job of reviewing such a wide range of international literature. This issue is definitely worth checking out, as are a number of the titles under review.