The Morning News Tournament of Books 2012
The Morning News Tournament of Books is BACK! For the uninitiated, this is a 16-book, bracket-style “tournament” designed to crown the . . . well, I’ll just let them explain it: Today we’re announcing the shortlist for the 2012 Tournament of Books (for novels, of course, published in 2011) only a week ...
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Arabic Booker Shortlist 2012
The shortlist for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (better know as the Arabic Booker) was announced earlier today. According to Chair of Judges, Georges Tarabichi, In these novels the authors’ show an innovative use of new styles to describe the social and historical variety of the Arab world, as well as ...
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The Shadow-Boxing Woman
Fiction post-Berlin Wall (and I am referring to immediately post-Berlin Wall) is rarely told in the way that Inka Parei has done in The Shadow-Boxing Woman. The prose imitates the dark, crumbling and ravaged atmosphere of East Berlin as well as the psychological state of the narrator, aptly named Hell. Parei sets out to write ...
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Six Questions for Margaret Carson [Again, We Rule]
Over at Conversational Reading, Scott Esposito has posted a six-question interview with Margaret Carson, translator of Sergio Chejfec’s My Two Worlds, which has been gathering a ton of praise. (Coincidentally, I finished reading his next Open Letter book—The Planets—while at MLA and can assure his fans that ...
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Russia's Best-Kept Literary Secret is an Open Letter Author [We Rule]
Russia Beyond the Headlines has a great piece about (and interview with) Mikhail Shishkin, the only Russian novelist to have won have won the Russian Booker, Big Book, and National Bestseller awards, and whose Maidenhair is coming out from Open Letter this summer in Marian Schwartz’s translation. Shishkin has been ...
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Keep Up the Good Work. And Please Go Bankrupt. [Some Publishers Are D*cks]
This is likely to be the first of two or three “socialist-leaning” posts I’m going to write this week in honor of the New Hampshire primary. . . . Anyway, to get to the point, I just read this PW piece and am feeling the rage. A recently introduced bill in the House of Representatives would bar the ...
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Thanks (Again)
Now that we’re solidly within 2012, we’d to take a minute to thank everyone who visits Three Percent, reads books from Open Letter (or any literature in translation, for that matter), hands an international novel to their friend, or takes the time to contribute some words, actions, time, attention or dollars in ...
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