"Emerging from Years of Obscurity . . ." [Bulgarian Literature, Part II]
About seven years ago, when I was working at Dalkey and prepping the marketing plan for Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov’s Natural Novel, I came up with a bit of a crazy idea. (Yeah, surprising, I know.) This remarkable books—a moving, fragmented portrait of one man’s dealing with divorce1 that’s ...
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Translation as Literary Ambassador
Last year around this time, Larry Rohter wrote this amazing piece about the mission of Open Letter and the need for literature in translation. Which did wonders for our reputation and subscription program, and was one of the coolest pieces of publicity we’ve ever received. Well, as the holidays roll back around, ...
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Andres Ressia Colino [Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists]
As we mentioned a couple Fridays ago, we’re going to spend the next 9 days highlighting all of the authors selected for Granta’s _“Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists” special issue. All past and future posts related to this issue can be found by clicking here. Today we’re looking at ...
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"In Praise of Reading and Fiction" [Vargas Llosa's Nobel Prize Speech]
Although the video version isn’t available yet, the full transcript of Mario Vargas Llosa’s Nobel Prize speech is now available online. Below is the opening, and if you’re interested in reading a Vargas Llosa book because of this, I’d highly highly highly recommend Conversations in the Cathedral. ...
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Visitation
Jenny Erpenbeck has already received a great deal of well-deserved critical acclaim in the wake of her third novel, Visitation (New Directions, translated by Susan Bernofsky), which Vogue has called “a remarkable achievement.” Such a response (especially coming from the mainstream, one is tempted to say) is very exciting ...
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Bulgarian Literature and Translation Awards [Bulgarian Literature, Part I]
We mentioned these contests a while back and at long last, here’s the official press release about the winning novel and translator. To make this all a bit more exciting, tomorrow I’m going to post short capsules on recent Bulgarian works published in English translation; Thursday I’ll post a long section of ...
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Pablo Gutierrez [Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists]
As we mentioned a couple Fridays ago, we’re going to spend the next 10 days highlighting all of the authors selected for Granta’s _“Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists” special issue. All past and future posts related to this issue can be found by clicking here. Today’s post—which ...
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