Dublinesque
“The funeral march has begun, and it is futile for those of us who remain loyal to the printed page to protest and rage in the midst of our despair.” Samuel Riba, Dublinesque’s depressive and narcissistic protagonist, stumbles upon this and other similarly prophetic sentiments in an online article ...
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The Russian Library Initiative: For Better or Worse
At the Read Russia event at Book Expo America last week (was it really only last week!?), Overlook Press announced a new project, the Russian Library initiative, supported by Read Russia and the Russian government that is going to result in the publication of 125 works over the next ten years that span all a thousand years of ...
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The Letter Killers Club
The Letter Killers Club, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, follows the meetings of a secret society of men who believe that committing words to paper has “crushed the reader’s imagination.” The men, self-labeled as “Conceivers” and known by nonsense syllables instead of their given names, meet every Saturday in a firelit ...
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The Long Term Is the Only Race Worth Winning
Right now I should be getting on a plane in Cape Town to head back home after the 29th International Publishers Congress. UNFORTUNATELY, the jags employees at Delta’s ticket counter in Atlanta refused to let me board the plane since my passport doesn’t contain a complete blank page. OK, I get it, I get in, ...
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Latvian Publishing Controversy
Our Latvian publishing correspondent Kaija Straumanis (no, not Janis Stirna, he’s restricted to Eurovision) came across an interesting controversy that just took place in Latvia. I think the translated letters/articles pretty much speak for themselves, but I’ll try and contextualize this as it goes along . . . ...
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Heather Cleary on translating The Planets
Heather Cleary, translator of Chejfec’s The Planets, which is just out now from us, on her experience in translating the book and what Chejfec’s language might mean: Holding the reader at arm’s length from the medium of its telling (the early image of the narrator attempting to read a newspaper and seeing ...
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