Don't tell me you want to return to those days without democracy, the PRI's?

By Nicole Rudick The appeal of some translated works lies in their ability to relate specific events to a broad foreign audience. Others operate in reverse, projecting a nonspecific vantage that…

The longlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has been announced. It’s gratifying to see so many fine writers in translation all lined up. Just as heartwarming to have featured work by…

by Anna FrajlichCynthia Haven talks to Anna Frajlich about exile, aesthetics, ethics and more in the work of Zbigniew Herbert. You can read Anna Frajlich’s essay on Herbert’s “Apollo…

For independents committed to discovering and showcasing new voices—be they home-grown or from foreign climes—2008 looms as a year of reckoning. In October 2007, Arts Council England‘s…

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…

Over at Three Percent, Karl Pohrt, owner of Shaman Drum bookstore and part of a US delegation of booksellers visiting the Beijing book fair, has been blogging his visit to China. Karl’s most recent…

Sehba Sarwar‘s first novel Black Wings was published in 2004 (Alhamra Publishing). Her essays, poems and stories largely deal with issues of gender and displacement, and have been published in anthologies…

by Anna FrajlichAnna Frajlich talks about aesthetics and ethics in Herbert's “Apollo and Marsyas.” Anna Frajlich has been called “the best Polish poetess of her generation.”…

Happily on theme for this month’s focus on Polish literature, the Polish Book Institute, Polish Cultural Institute in London, Polish Cultural Institute in New York and W.A.B. Publishing House in…

Twelve knots are losing patience around the eyebrows / of the year to come.

He had felt restless all autumn, but without understanding why.

The first time you slept with Jak was the day after he came to declare his intentions to your parents.

A call for entries for the 2008 Saif-Ghobash Banipal Prize from our friends at Banipal. Note that the deadline is 31 January! (And that this is for books published in the UK.)The end of this month, 31…

by Peter Dale ScottCynthia Haven interviews Peter Dale Scott, one of the earliest translators of the work of Zbigniew Herbert. You can find James Marcus’s introduction to the poet over here.—EditorsPeter…

We’re delighted to launch the year in book clubs with a fantastic new club on the Collected Poems of the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert. Conducting interviews, holding forth on individual poems and…

because Afrikaans literature is such a relatively small body of work that this will be a powerful addition to that body.

Now was the time to ask for a recommendation from David.

No one was surprised by his arrival.

Shouldn't the leader of the National Front be held responsible for the murder committed by one of his brainwashed teenaged supporters?

Asbjørn Hall didn't argue....He'd never argued.

First things first: I didn't write the book everyone thinks I wrote, the one that has been showering me with fame and riches since its publication, just over one year go.

His real name was probably Max Mirebalais, although we will never know for sure.

The wheat pointed to the glorious future: of glorious harvests in the glorious times to come once Communism had been realized.

In the final installment of our book club discussion of Camara Laye’s The Radiance of the King, Laila Lalami discusses the ways in which Laye’s book went against the literary conventions of…

From Diary of A Bad Year: “I read again last night the fifth chapter of the second part of The Brothers Karamazov, the chapter in which Ivan hands back his ticket of admission to the universe God…

Alexander (Sandy) Taylor was a brilliant publisher of literature in translation whose Curbstone Press, co-founded with his wife, Judith Doyle, is an inspiration to us all. For those who didn’t know…

The editors of Russian Life magazine announce the first ever issue of their companion publication, Chtenia. From the Russian word for “readings,” Chtenia‘s aims are the logical extension…

Last weekend I received an early Xmas gift in the form of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s new translation of War and Peace. Most striking to note is that Knopf decided to put a picture…