Books to Look Forward To: "Pornografia" by Witold Gombrowicz
The past few years has seen a bit of a Witold Gombrowicz renaissance. Yale University Press has published Danuta Borchardt’s retranslations1 of Cosmos and Ferdydurke, Archipelago published Bill Johnston’s translation of Bacacay, and Dalkey Archive reissued A Kind of Testament. And coming in November from Grove ...
>
Editors Speak Piece on Merce Rodoreda's Death in Spring
Jeff Waxman from The Front Table was kind enough to let me write a pretty long piece on Merce Rodoreda’s Death in Spring, a book that I absolutely love. Rodoreda’s something special, and the book (which is paper-over-board—get it while it’s hot!) has one of the most intricate, fitting, and cool covers ...
>
The Frankfurt Book Fair's Press Trip to China
As mentioned last week, China is the Guest of Honor at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, and to prepare for this, four journalists from the FBF have headed over to Peking on a “journey of literary discovery.” (Which I believe means listening to a lot of speeches about China’s book industry and traveling ...
>
Jan Kjaerstad's Trilogy
The third part of Jan Kjaerstad’s “Wergeland Trilogy” (The Seducer, The Conqueror and The Discoverer) was recently released in the UK (our edition comes out in September), and Paul Binding wrote a really nice overview of the book for The Independent: The Discoverer completes the trilogy to which ...
>
Paper-Over-Board and a Bit of an Announcement
My first article for Publishing Perspectives went live this morning and is all about the advantages (and disadvantages) of the paper-over-board format. I have a visceral hatred for dust jackets – I strip them off, I crinkle them, I lose them. So in 2007, when in the process of launching Open Letter (a new ...
>
Calling All Infinite Jest Fans
Infinite Summer officially kicks off this week, with participants reading and discussing the first 63 pages of David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece, Infinite Jest. Covering approximately 75 pages a week (the entire reading schedule can be found here) , this group will read one of the longest novels of our generation by ...
>
Editor of "Transit Tehran" Arrested in Iran
From Newsweek: Among the dozens of people arrested overnight in Tehran was Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari, who has covered Iran for the magazine for over a decade. Bahari was home asleep at 7 a.m. when several security officers showed up at his Tehran apartment. According to his mother, who lives with the 41-year-old ...
>