World Literature Tour: Romania
The Guardian’s world literature tour visits
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Today's Arts Council England Funding Update
This morning, I received a couple interesting e-mails regarding the ACE funding cuts that we’ve been talking about for the past couple weeks. As most everyone has heard, a number of independent publishers—including Dedalus and Arcadia, two presses that do a lot of work in translations—have had the funding ...
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Censorship of Literature in Iran
This past Sunday, the Guardian ran a very troubling article about a publishing crackdown in Iran: After the 1979 Islamic revolution, the government imposed strict rules on book publishing. Since then, the Ministry of Culture has been charged to vet all books before publication, mainly for erotic and religious ...
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Sounds Like Dubravka Ugresic
From The Guardian post about singer and songwriter Lily Allen being named a judge for the Orange Prize: Well, fair enough. We will let this one pass. But only because Ms Allen has demonstrated that she has a way with words. Leaving that aside, we note that this is part of an inexorable trend: that in order for any ...
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Why Translate Poetry?
In James Buchan’s review of Paul Celan’s Snow Part/Schneepart and Other Poems he asks just this: Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice. If you do not understand what Sereni meant when he wrote “è la mia / sola ...
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Guardian World Literature Tour in Spain
This month (October I guess . . . seems like the Brits are jumping the gun a bit), the Guardian World Literature Tour will be talking about Spain. So far, the recommendations are pretty straightforward—lot of love for Cela, Javier Marias, Juan Marse, Ramon Lllull, and Juan Goytisolo “if you like sheer ...
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John Freeman on America's Non-Reading Culture
John Freeman—President of the National Book Critics Circle—has a post at his Guardian books blog about the recent report that 25% of Americans didn’t read a book last year. America has always had one of the lowest literacy rates in the western world. The former book review editor of the LA Times, Steve ...
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