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Valles on Herbert

Alissa Valles on the poet she translated, Zbigniew Herbert: Until recently, visitors to Kraków, Poland, might have easily stumbled across a bit of graffiti on the ancient wall surrounding the Old Town. “We Will Fulfill Herbert’s Testament,” the text read, referring to Zbigniew Herbert, a poet of national pride and ...

Dedi Felman's Miami

Dedi gives her last report from the Miami Book Fair, summing up some translation recommendations from the agent’s buzz ...

Czech National Library

The Czechs want to build a new national library. They’d like it to look like this: Purple and

Szerb and Pushkin Press

Puskin Press has been translating the novels of Antal Szerb, and Alberto Manguel is very appreciative: Szerb’s first novel exulted in the absurdity of life while his last despaired over it. His most well-known work, Journey by Moonlight, written in 1937, maintained a powerful tension between both. As his translator ...

From the Urals

The distancing of the Russian provinces from Moscow has thus far brought little change to the intellectual provincialism of the regions. Only the rocky Urals have turned out to provide fertile soil for a cultural blossoming. There are in particular three literary figures from the Urals who need fear no comparison with ...

Cervantes prize to Juan Gelman

Argentine poet Juan Gelman, who wrote about the pain of loss under his country’s military juntas, has won the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s top literary ...

Can You Spot the Library?

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