This Is Cool
A couple weeks ago, J. Peder Zane asked me to contribute to his Top Ten Books project featuring top ten lists from a bunch of famous writers. I was going to do an all translations list, but ended up just listing ten of my favorite books since 1950. (And I’ll admit right now that this list is unstable. Within five ...
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Sunday's NY Times Book Review is Filthy with Translations
Hard to say that the New York Times doesn’t review translations after this week . . . In addition to Kakutani’s possibly insane review of The Kindly Ones, this weekend’s Book Review includes articles on four works of literature in translation. First off, Liesl Schillinger reviews the Melville House ...
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Best Translated Book 2008 Longlist: What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire? by Antonio Lobo Antunes
For the next several weeks we’ll be highlighting a book-a-day from the 25-title Best Translated Book of 2008 longlist, leading up to the announcement of the 10 finalists. Click here for all previous write-ups. What Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire? by Antonio Lobo Antunes, translated from the Portuguese by ...
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Best Translated Book of 2008: The Honorable Mentions
Tomorrow morning we will unveil the 25 works of fiction that made the “Best Translated Book of the Year” longlist, but as a prelude, I thought I’d highlight a few titles that didn’t make it and a couple of magazines that deserve some special recognition. A twenty-five title longlist might seem like a ...
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Saramago's Latest
Complete Review pointed this out as well, but the Independent has an article by Elizabeth Nash about the latest Saramago book, The Elephant’s Journey: Portugal’s Nobel Literature laureate Jose Saramago has announced the completion of his latest work “The Elephant’s Journey”, based on the ...
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Reading the World 2008: Knowledge of Hell by Antonio Lobo Antunes
This is the eighth Reading the World 2008 title we’re covering. Write-ups of the other titles can be found here. And information about the Reading the World program—a special collaboration between publishers and independent booksellers to promote literature in translation throughout the month of June—is ...
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The Other Major Galley of 2008 I've Been Waiting For
In addition to Bolano’s 2666, the other big (in every sense of the word) galley I’ve been waiting for is Antonio Lobo Antunes’s What Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire?, which is due out in September from W.W. Norton. Well, it arrived yesterday: It’s only 585 pages long and is prefaced ...
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