Literary Roundup: Translating world voices

From Literalab

The PEN World Voices festival is underway in New York, running from April 29 to May 5. There are a lot of great events, including Mikhail Shishkin speaking on a panel about book reviewers, a conversation with Polish author of Russians in Warsaw Agata Tuszyńska, a Literary Safari including Hungarian Noémi Szécsi and Czech Michal Ajvaz, who also are taking part in a cool-sounding panel on May 4 titled Invisible Cities, Visible Cities.

Then there are two giants of Central European writing in Claudio Magris and Norman Manea on a panel dealing with multilinguality as well as in conversation with one another on May 2. Not to scare anyone, but these two were scheduled to hold a NYC conversation last fall but were prevented by higher forces in the form of Hurricane Sandy. If this year’s event is cancelled as well because of a tornado or an unexpected snowstorm or an earthquake then I suggest not rescheduling but having them write out what they were going to say and just publishing the conversation as an essay.

The PEN World Voices program can be seen here.

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CKCU Literary News: http://www2.carleton.ca/litnews/

Hosted by Hans G. Ruprecht in collaboration with Carleton’s multicultural community and numerous correspondents, the show is bringing news items, features and interviews about the considerable range of debate LITERATURE  is generating in Europe, as it always has and continues to do in many countries. 

http://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/player.raw.html?id=11232

2013 Best Translated Book Award Finalists Announced

From publishingperspectives.com

by Dennis Abrams

The finalists for the Best Translated Book Award in fiction and poetry have been announced. The award, founded in 2007 by the Three Percent weblog and underwritten with $25,000 in prize money from Amazon.com, exists to help bring attention to great works of international literature published in the previous year.

BTBA Fiction Finalists 2013:

• The Planets by Sergio Chejfec, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary (Open Letter Books, Argentina)
• Prehistoric Times by Eric Chevillard, translated from the French by Alyson Waters (Archipelago Books, France)
• The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, translated from the Persian by Tom Patterdale (Melville House, Iran)
• Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes (New Directions, Hungary)
• Autoportrait by Edouard Leve, translated from the French by Lorin Stein (Dalkey Archive Press, France)
• A Breath of Life: Pulsations by Clarice Lispector, translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz (New Directions, Brazil)
• The Hunger Angel by Herta Muller, translated from the German by Philip Boehm (Metropolitan Books, Romania)
• Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin, translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz (Open Letter Books, Russia)
• Transit by Abdourahman A. Waberi, translated from the French by David Ball and Nicole Ball (Indiana University Press, Djibouti)
• My Father’s Book by Urs Widmer, translated from the German by Donal McLaughlin (Seagull Books, Switzerland)

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"Writing before Literature: Later Latin Scriptures and the Memory of Rome"

From www.bris.ac.uk

Blackwell-Bristol Lectures 2013: European Literature and Latin Late Antiquity

8 May 2013, 5.15 pm

The annual Blackwell-Bristol Lectures 2013 will this year be given by Mark Vessey, Professor of English at University of British Columbia. Professor Vessey's research interests include Jerome, Augustine and Latin late antiquity; Erasmus and the literary Renaissance; classical and Christian traditions in European literature.

No other city has written its name across time, space, language and culture like Rome. Configured in the late republican and Augustan eras and updated as required in the early Empire, the signifying codes of an assimilative and multi-ethnic Romanity were comprehensively revised by emperors, artists and ideologues of late antiquity in both East and West.  At the same time, they were converted to the ends of a Christian universalism that transcended the limits of Rome's empire. 

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Announcing The James H. Ottaway Jr. Award for the Promotion of International Literature

From wordswithoutborders.org


Contact Information
Contact: Joshua Mandelbaum, Executive Director
Organization Name: Words without Borders
E-mail Address: joshua@wordswithoutborders.org
Web site Address: wordswithoutborders.org

New York City, New York, March 25, 2013—Words without Borders announces the creation of the James H. Ottaway, Jr. Award for the Promotion of International Literature

Words without Borders, a nonprofit and online magazine, has announced the creation of the James H. Ottaway, Jr. Award for the Promotion of International Literature (aka The Ottaway). The Ottaway is named in honor of the organization’s first chair and current Chair Emeritus, James H. Ottaway, Jr., in recognition of his leadership during the organization’s formative years. It will be first presented  at WWB’s 10th anniversary  dinner in October of this year  and thereafter at the organization’s annual benefit dinner to an individual whose work and activism have supported the mission of Words without Borders, of promoting cultural understanding through the publication and promotion of international literature.

"With this award, we are recognizing Jim's critical support during the formative years of WWB.  It is no exaggeration to say that without his leadership and dedication, WWB would not be what it is today.  As we celebrate our tenth anniversary this year, we also celebrate Jim's commitment, which has been a boon to WWB and serves as an inspiration to the publishing and philanthropic communities as well."

Nominees for The Ottaway will be solicited from the large community of translators, authors, publishers, agents, editors, and activists, and the final honoree chosen by a select jury. The Ottaway will not honor a translated work or body of work, but instead honor individuals who have succeeded in furthering literature in translation in the United States.

For additional information, please contact:

Contact: Joshua Mandelbaum, Executive Director
Organization Name: Words without Borders
Email Address: joshua@wordswithoutborders.org
Web site Address: wordswithoutborders.org


Founded in 2003, Words without Borders is a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of global understanding through the translation, publication, and promotion of international literature. To date WWB has translated over 1,600 pieces of literature and poetry representing 92 languages by writers from 119 countries. WWB has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, the Boston Globe, the Guardian (UK), Vanity Fair, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as in various foreign-language papers and numerous literary blogs. Our most recent print anthology is Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010).

Amélie Nothomb’s “Life Form”

Reviewed by Emma Garman

From wordswithoutborders.org

Translated from the French by Alison Anderson
Europa Editions, 2013

“I need to be very hungry all the time,” celebrated Belgian novelist and disordered eater Amélie Nothomb once admitted. “I need to be very hungry to write.” For her nineteenth book, Life Form, Nothomb has applied her preternaturally original mind to those two favorite subjects—writing and “superhunger”—to create a story that, even by her standards, is astonishing in its wit and grace. As usual, we meet a narrator named Amélie, who’s almost indistinguishable from the author. But in a new departure for Nothomb, this partly epistolary novel also includes the perspective of a character with whom she has little in common—an American man—thus creating an extra challenge for her longtime translator, Alison Anderson.

Read more: http://wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/amelie-nothombs-life-form#ixzz2RFg0UiRu

Spanish theatres and artists find creative solutions to austerity measures

From culture360.org
By Judith Staines 

Photo: culture360.org

The ever-inventive theatre sector in Spain is developing original strategies to confront economic austerity and arts budget cuts. These currently include selling carrots as theatre tickets (a VAT reduction measure) and creating an audience buzz around pop-up microtheatres in private apartments.

Carrot rebellion

A theatre near Barcelona found a radical solution to protest against new VAT taxes imposed on theatre tickets – instead of selling theatre tickets, it sold carrots to audience members. Vegetables are subject to just 4% VAT instead of the 21% rate introduced for theatre tickets (a rise of 13% from the previous rate of 8%).

This so-called ‘carrot rebellion’ caught the public imagination and received plenty of international press. The ‘carrot formula’ which was first applied in the small theatre of Bescanó, has now been extended to a concert hall in Zaragoza and to the Festival Còmic de Figueres.

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Journey to Iceland’s cultural miracle

From www.presseurop.eu


The "Sonar 2013" festival of new music and technology in Reykjavik's Harpa centre, www.presseurop.eu
By Daniel Verdú

Iceland escaped the grip of austerity and has turned Icelandic culture into the country’s second largest contributor to GDP, with an impact of around €1bn per year. Unemployment is at 5.7 per cent, growth at 3 per cent – and the island is alive to the sound of music and movie shoots.

If the financial collapse Iceland went through in 2008 is viewed as a laboratory of questions and answers about the current crisis, taking notes on some of the solutions the Icelanders have come up with might be wise.

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Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013

From booktrust

The Independent Foreign Prize honours the best work of fiction by a living author, which has been translated into English from any other language and published in the United Kingdom. Uniquely, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize gives the winning author and translator equal status: each receives £5,000.

About the shortlist

Andrés Neuman adds some fire to this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist with his epic novel Traveller of the Century, which explores an affair between the hearts, minds and bodies of two literary translators. Together they build a language of understanding as they work to translate European poetry, whilst continuing a secret sexual relationship, leading them to ask if translation itself is an act of love. The full shortlist sees diverse themes of history, war and love battling it out for the £10,000 Prize, to be announced on 20 May.

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Writer Jordi Puntí to participate at the European Literature Night

From www.llull.cat


Photo: www.llull.cat

8 European writers have been selected amongst the 70 entries nominated by Cultural Institutes, Embassies, Publishers and Cultural Organisations. Jordi Puntí’s first novel Lost Luggage will be published in English by Short Books in April. 

Sarah Sanders, organiser of the ELN said:  ‘Speaking Volumes is delighted to be working with Institut Ramon Llull and author Jordi Puntí at London’s European Literature Night event at the British Library in May. In an incredible year for Catalan literature with 10 new titles being published in the UK, Lost Luggage is an outstanding work and an extraordinary pan-European story that UK readers will find both moving and deeply funny. With additional events around translation being programmed this year, Jordi’s contribution as an author and accomplished translator will bring his work to a wider audience and potential UK readership.’

The full list of writers for the European Literature Night Norbert Gstrein (Austria), Erwin Mortier (Belgium), Jordi Puntí, Jachym Topol (Czech Republic ), Brigit Vanderbeke (Germany), Frank Westerman (Netherlands), Miha Mazzini (Slovenia) and Ece Temelkuran (Turkey).

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