Fado
The Polish novelist and essayist Andrzej Stasiuk owns a century-old travel map of Austro-Hungary. Aside from its fragility, he writes, its most notable feature is its level of detail: “[E]very village of half a dozen cottages, every godforsaken backwater where the train stops—even only the slow train, even only once a ...
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"The Mighty Angel" by Jerzy Pilch [BTBA 2010 Fiction Longlist]
Over the next five weeks, we’ll be highlighting a book a day from the Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist. Click here for all past write-ups. The Mighty Angel by Jerzy Pilch. Translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston. (Poland, Open Letter) The Mighty Angel is a difficult book to talk about. ...
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Summer 2010 Open Letter Catalog
Only seems appropriate that just before Christmas we should announce our summer list of titles . . . You can click here to download a pdf version of the new catalog (which contains excerpts from all the books), or, for those of you who are anti-pdf, the list below has the basic information for the next five Open Letter ...
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2009 Nike Award Shortlist
Last week they announced the shortlist for the prestigious NIKE Award, which will be awarded on October 4th. The shortlist: The Flypaper Factory, Andrzej Bart (WAB) The writer narrates the imaginary Łódź trial of Chaim Rumkowski, chairman of the Judenrat in the Łódź Ghetto. Bambino, Inga Iwasiów (Świat ...
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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 ...
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2009 NIKE Awards
Haven’t found the full list online yet, but apparently the longlist for this year’s NIKE Literary Award (the most prestigious literary award in Poland) have been announced. I’ll post an update when I find the full list, but for now, I can say that both Bambino by Inga Iwasiow and Poland Marches On by our own ...
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Nike 2008 Longlist
Earlier this month Gazeta Wyborcza announced the longlist for the 2008 Nike Prize, which is awarded to the best Polish book from last year. The website is less than helpful—every time I click on the “more” button about the prize, I’m brought back to the same opening page and the fragmented ...
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