Happy Halloween to our All-Hallow’s-Eve-observing readers. Do you have a literary costume? You could dress up as tumultuous Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who celebrated his 100th birthday this week (from the grave). Or you could simply celebrate by reading R.L. Stine (of Goosebumps fame)’s recently live-tweeted short story, “What’s in my Sandwich?” (Good question). Or ponder the following question, as answered by Ayana Mathis and Francine Prose: what’s the most terrifying book you’ve ever read?
We don’t often hear ebulliently happy news from Iran, but two bits of note from this week: first, check out this appropriately spooky trailer for indie Iranian filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour’s Vampire Western (yes, that’s a genre now) “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night,” which premiered at Sundance this past January and is prepping for a wider release. Or, for younger folk: Iranian children’s literature is slated to arrive, in translation, in the United Kingdom. When the little ones are tucked away, read this interview with noted Iranian author Azar Nafisi, re-affirming the necessity of literature in the struggle for freedom.
We count on translation quite frequently for that. Here’s an account by Bryan Oliu of translating his grandfather’s Catalan: “To start translating a book that your grandfather wrote in Catalan, you must first learn Catalan.” (Nice). And while the Nobel torrent of late has (largely) died down, here’s a collection of Nobel translators on their work, which includes the likes of Herta Müller, Tomas Transtomer, and, most recently, Patrick Modiano (remember: without translators, a global literary honor would, naturally, be impossible in the first place!). In the spirit of doggedly difficult translation: here’s how in Russia, Dr. Doolittle became Dr. Aybolit.
Translating into English is especially rough because English doesn’t contain all those fun language bits we translate from—here are four linguistic tendencies all English speakers should particularly envy.
In the wake of all the hullaballoo around bookstore closures, an ode to perhaps one of the best in the world—the famous Shakespeare and Company, located in Paris, France. The shop is no mere brick-and-mortar: it’s a veritable story of love, loss, and literature.
A few weeks ago, we announced the first-ever Kirkus Prize, an English-language award boasting a 50,000-dollar honey bucket. This week, the winners have been announced: in the nonfiction category, cartoonist Roz Chast snags top honors for Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, while Lily King earned the fiction prize for her novel, Euphoria.