2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Longlist
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist was announced this morning, and is pretty spectacular. As you’ll find out on Tuesday, four of the books on the IFFP longlist are also on the BTBA longlist. (Which may seem small, but a number of these—The Detour, The Sound of Things Falling—have yet to be ...
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Win a Copy of "A Short Tale of Shame"
Over at GoodReads, we’re giving away 20 copies of Angel Igov’s A Short Tale of Shame, co-winner of the 2012 Contemporary Bulgarian Writers Contest. After deciding to take a semester off their studies to think about future plans, long-time friends Maya, Sirma, and Spartacus decide to hitchhike to the sea. ...
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French-American Foundation Translation Prize Finalists
Less than one week before we announce the fiction longlist for the Best Translated Book Award (I have three more pre-announcements posts in the works to whet your appetite), but in the meantime, the French-American Foundation just announced the finalists for their Translation Prize. The French-American Foundation ...
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A Vote for Pynchon Is a Vote for Ryan Chapman, Is a Vote Against Riverhead
Ryan Chapman (who totally rocked this podcast about the Pynchon ebooks and whatnot) just emailed me about “The Davids,” an annual competition among Penguin imprints to win a small plastic trophy . . . Here, I’ll let them explain: Every year Penguin selects the best book videos for The Davids, named ...
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Mama Leone
Like Scotts or High Elvish, childhood is simultaneously both a real language and a totally made-up one. We all spoke it once, but in the time since we spoke it last we’ve forgotten enough that our own memories can seem, if not incomprehensible, then at least significantly garbled. Being adults—meaning, being creatures ...
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Another Short Short Story for Your Monday Morning
Over at Bomb’s blog you can read “First Kiss,” a short story by Clarice Lispector, and translated from the Portuguese by Rachel Klein. The two of them murmured more than talked: the relationship had begun just a little while before and they were both giddy, it was love. Love and what comes with it: ...
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And Here Comes Your Next Favorite Latin American Writer
Next year, Open Letter Books will published Chilean author Carlos Labbé’s Navidad and Matanza, which I guarantee will immediately become a favorite of Bolaño and Zambra and Chejfec and Saer fans everywhere. I think this book is going to blow everyone away (specifically looking at you, Scott Esposito) and very well ...
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