Haruki Murakami and the Problems of Popularity
I’m home sick—damn winter colds that are even resistant to Advil Cold & Sinus, the Wonder Drug—so it’s a perfect day for a guest post from intern Will Eells. You might remember Will from his review of The Housekeeper and the Professor, and he will be writing more reviews for us in the future, ...
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Michael Orthofer's Nobel Prize Speculation
Not many people are as dialed into the Nobel Prize for Literature speculation as Michael Orthofer of the Literary Saloon. And his post this morning about the possibility of Herta Müller being announced as the winner tomorrow is pretty intriguing. And before anyone says “Herta who?,” Michael already put together ...
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Zone, Zone, Zone
Mathias Enard’s Zone, which we’ve mentioned a few times already, just keeps racking up attention. Thanks to Michael, for pointing out that Zone made Lire‘s 20 best books of 2008 list. According to my pidgin French, they say that it “possesses a scope that is rare in the French novel” and that ...
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Arabic Literature in English Translation
In the Literary Saloon post about David Tresilian’s A Brief Guide to Modern Arabic Literature, Michael Orthofer quotes this paragraph about the dismal (though not terribly shocking) number of Arabic books translated into English since World War II: Recently modern Arabic literature seems to have made several long ...
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As If It's Not Hard Enough Selling Translations
Michael Orthofer has a great rant over at Literary Saloon about “how not to publish translations.” His piece centers around Serbian Classics Press, a press that I’ve personally never heard of (neither had Michael, so I feel like my ignorance is excusable), but one that is bringing out Mansarda, Danilo ...
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Daniel Hahn on Translatedfiction.org.uk
The Literary Saloon pointed out another new UK-based translation site: this time Booktrust’s Translated Ficion. One of the first articles on the site is from Daniel Hahn, translator of one of my favorite authors, Jose Eduardo Agualusa. He has a refreshingly different take on the low number of translations that appear ...
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