Articles Tagged “ Cities ”
An Author Questionnaire for “The Jewish Messiah”
On the subject of "small cultural differences between the U.S. and Europe," I'd like to say a few words about the author questionnaire. Before this summer I thought that questionnaires were limited to a few occasions: when applying for visa or for jobs. When a lady from the census rings the doorbell…...read more »
Reading Bioy Casares
I had never heard the name Adolfo Bioy Casares until I read a lengthy review of his diaries in Times Literary Supplement What Eckermann was to Goethe, Mr. Bioy was to Jorge Luis Borges. He aspired to be him. Mr. Bioy's diaries are 1644 pages (even in the edited version), but based on the review,…...read more »
Free Aung San Suu Kyi!
As the feeding frenzy that is Frankfurt Book Fair gets into full swing, a more mindful energy is fuelling the monks leading the people power revolution against the Military Junta in Burma. Last Saturday, thousands of demonstrators marched from Millbank, looped across the River Thames, and ended up in…...read more »
High Noon in Linz
I grew up without weapons. While nobody in my family was a vegetarian—or ever thought of becoming one—I was taught that hunting was a pastime for those who despised science and art. The philosopher Roger Scruton would have vehemently disagreed with my education, but no matter. When I was…...read more »
Maxim Biller
A few weeks ago, I moderated an evening with Maxim Biller at the Goethe Institute in New York. Maxim Biller is a German author, although he was born in Prague and only moved to Germany when he was ten years old. He is definitely German. The Israeli newspaper H'aaretz published a profile on Biller earlier…...read more »
A Case of Serendipity?
In one week, I bumped into a writer I had the pleasure of publishing in 1994, and his first translator in English, neither of whom I had seen for over ten years. Daniel Pennac (winner of this year's Prix Renaudot for Chagrin d'école) and the first Children's Laureate, Quentin Blake, were in conversation…...read more »
Lori Berenson
In the early fall of 2006, I traveled to Peru to visit an American woman, Lori Berenson, who has been incarcerated in Peru since December 1995 on charges of terrorism. I wrote about it for a Dutch newspaper and I also mentioned my trip on this blog. Back then, I traveled to Peru with Lori's father,…...read more »
Reading Rutka Laskier
From to time to time, a Dutch publisher will ask me to write a preface or an afterword to a book he plans to publish. I have written prefaces for authors as different as Machiavelli, Stendhal and Boris Vian. Last November I received a letter from a publisher, asking if I was interested in writing a preface…...read more »
Literary Malaise
Recently I was having a conversation with a friend about literary malaise, or to be more precise, we were talking about malaise in general. We reached the conclusion that there are quite a few different types of malaise, and that a certain comfort can be found in malaise. What would a politician running…...read more »
The A to Z of Literary Translation: G to I
Grants, awards and prizes such as the Nobel Prize in literature, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation, help put writers and their translators under the spotlight and boost sales. The TA's Translation…...read more »
The Literature of the Future
A couple of weeks ago on a cold night I walked to the Mercantile Library—for the first time in all these years that I have been living in Manhattan I have to admit—to listen to a discussion about literature in translation, organized by this excellent website. The space turned out a little bit…...read more »
Preparations for a Close Escape
In preparation for my trip to Iraq in May, I have now met with two war correspondents. One of them is an American. We met in a bar in Brooklyn. The other is a Dutch war correspondent with whom I had dinner in Amsterdam. The American correspondent was a man who is more or less my age. As is often the…...read more »
The A to Z of Literary Translation: P to R
Publishers in the independent sector are fundamental to ensure variety in the marketplace; they are surviving despite stiff competition and the discount war, (ref. Society of Authors, The Future of Independent Publishing). Tired preconceptions continue to hamper the progress of translations in the UK…...read more »
Pints with Roddy Doyle
The first time that I drank Guinness was also the first time that I met Roddy Doyle. It was the winter of 1997. My Dutch publisher and I had decided to meet in Dublin, which is halfway between New York and Amsterdam more or less. Since Roddy Doyle was published by the same house in the Netherlands that…...read more »
The A to Z of Literary Translation: W, X, Y & Z
Worldwide web development and the long-tail phenomenon offer new opportunities for the visibility of literary translation. Electronic translation software is to be avoided. Postcolonial and new immigrant writing benefit from cross-frontier digital exchange. And lesser known cultures and languages can…...read more »
Dutch Translation Workshops in Italy
For the last 10 days I have been touring through Italy giving workshops at universities where Dutch is being taught. I was surprised to hear that there are five Italian cities where you can study Dutch: Naples, Rome, Bologna, Padua and Trieste. I have been to all of these cities the last 10 days, with…...read more »
The Future of Literature
Two days after I left Iraq, I traveled to a small resort at the Black Sea for a writer's conference about the future of literature. For some reason it seemed to me the right sequence: first Baghdad and then a conference about the future of literature. I have been to a few literary festivals, but this…...read more »
Reading Gregor von Rezzori
A Dutch newspaper asked me to review the recently published Dutch translation of Gregor von Rezzori's Memoirs of an Anti-Semite. I have to admit that the name Rezzori vaguely rang a bell, but that was about it. He is much better known in the US, where Memoirs of an Anti-Semite was published in the New…...read more »
Truth and War Literature
As of Monday September 8, I've been teaching at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Not forever, thank God, just for one semester. One course that I'm teaching side-by-side with a philosopher is about Plato's Symposium. I'm not a Plato specialist, and neither is the philosopher. For close reading,…...read more »
A Treaty of Love
After my trip to Lebanon in the spring of 2007, I traveled to London to interview the Lebanese-Palestinian author Samir El-Youssef. El-Youssef has a beautiful and contagious laugh. That was the first thing I noticed over lunch in a Lebanese restaurant. The second thing that became clear was that El-Youssef…...read more »
Book World
Recently I had lunch with a friend of mine in Manhattan. We had not even finished our sandwiches when my friend received her first text message. Usually I find it annoying when somebody starts reading text messages over lunch or dinner, but for parents with young children I make exceptions. My friend…...read more »
An Athenian Story…from Nigeria
As part of our Greek offerings this month, we're featuring a number of pieces written by Gazmand Kapllani, an extract from whose Short Border Handbook is available on WWB. The pieces all deal with the immigrant experience in today's Athens, one of the most diverse cities in southern Europe. I started…...read more »
An Athenian Story…from Iran
This is the second installment of a series of "Athenian Stories" from Gazmend Kapllani as a complement to our Greek issue this month. In these short dispatches, Kapllani documents the experience of immigrants living in Athens, one of the most diverse cities in southern Europe. Links are available at…...read more »
An Athenian Story…from Vietnam
This is the third installment of a series of "Athenian Stories" from Gazmend Kapllani as a complement to our Greek issue this month. In these short dispatches, Kapllani documents the experience of immigrants living in Athens, one of the most diverse cities in southern Europe. Links are available at the…...read more »
An Athenian Story…from Afghanistan
This is the fourth installment in a series of "Athenian Stories" from Gazmend Kapllani as a complement to our Greek issue this month. In these short dispatches, Kapllani documents the experience of immigrants living in Athens, one of the most diverse cities in southern Europe. Links are available at…...read more »
An Athenian Story from…the Alexandra Birth Clinic
This is the fifth and final installment in a series of "Athenian Stories" from Gazmend Kapllani as a complement to our Greek issue this month. In these short dispatches, Kapllani documents the experience of immigrants living in Athens, one of the most diverse cities in southern Europe. Links are available…...read more »
Reading Daniel Kehlmann
Daniel Kehlmann (born in 1975) is the star of German literature. His historical novel Die Vermessung der Welt (published in the US by Vintage as Measuring the World) sold more than 1.4 million copies in Germany alone. The English newspaper The Guardian wrote in an article about Kehlmann: íFor…...read more »
The Way You Speak about a Cold
Moldova is a forgotten country. Even in Europe, many people hardly know of its existence. Forgotten countries are often poor, and this is also the case with Moldova. It's one of the poorest countries in Europe. Recently, Moldova made it into the international press. Demonstrations against its communist…...read more »
The Fantasy and the Far-Out
Why do people want to listen to an author when they have their books? From time to time, I'm plagued by this question. The last week of May, the Third International Forum on the Novel took place in the French city of Lyon. The line-up was impressive, from Aharon Appelfeld to Will Self, and from Adam…...read more »
Embedded in Dutch Suburbia
Suburbia is a mythical place. At least, it is if you believe quite a few novels, ranging from Updike's Couples to Yates' Revolutionary Road. And one could argue that Madame Bovary takes place in a village that is just suburbia's predecessor. Suburbia appears to be place where middle class morality is…...read more »
The Task of the Novelist at the University
Like last year, I am going to teach two courses in the Netherlands this fall. One course is on two books by Coetzee, at the University of Leiden, and one is on genetic modification from a literary point of view at the University of Wageningen. According to its website, Wageningen is íthe leading…...read more »
The Author’s Voice and the Translator’s
Recently, I traveled to Paris to assist my publisher there with the promotion of one of my novels that had been translated into French. Any excuse to visit Paris is a good excuse. It's easy to forget the hardship of the publicist. The publicist has to promote books that other people decided were…...read more »
Literature as Social Experiment
A literary magazine in Romania published my nonfiction story about a group of American men who traveled to Ukraine in the hopes of finding a bride, or sex, or a combination of both. The tour was organized by a marriage agency in Arizona. Exactly one year ago, I embarked on this tour with them, disguised…...read more »
The City and the Writer: In London with Owen Hatherley
Special City Series/London If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. …...read more »
The City and the Writer: In Florence with Elisa Biagini
If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. …...read more »