Happy Friday, friends! Cue shock and awe at the passage of time: February is almost over, and soon we’ll be plucking daffodils in springtime fields. Feel like a summer road trip? Take cues from Norwegian literary bad boy and memoirist Karl Ove Knausgaard’s road trip across the United States (one of his goals is to go without speaking to other Americans—go figure). Here’s the first part of the Saga, in exhaustive detail and translated by Ingvild Burkley.
This week in big literary prizes: the big-bucks Windham Campbell Prize goes to literary figures like Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole, British writer Geoff Dyer, and Nigerian poet and writer Helon Habila, among others. And Typographical Era has finally announced its Translation Award, which goes to Texas: The Great Theft, written by Carmen Boullosa and translated by Samantha Schnee, published also by newbie and blog friend Deep Vellum Press. Congratulations! In case you’re wondering, Three Percent’s highly-anticipated Best Translated Book Award will be announced at BookExpo America this year (and the longlist is looming… any bets?).
Honoring the past, in one way or another: Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s remains will have to be reburied alongside his third wife, according to a judge’s ruling that put to end widespread speculation around the bard’s nebulous cause of death. And how do you feel about Belgian pulp legend, Georges Simenon?
You might bemoan the digital-literary revolution—but there are some perks, like Amazon’s newly-launched crowdsourced publishing initiative, aptly called Kindle Scout. Meanwhile, and more decidedly low-tech, an artist has rendered a pen-drawn issue of the Guardian from four (!) years ago—it’s hardly legible, but incredible nonetheless. And while letterwriting has gone by the wayside in an era of email, text, and tweet, it’s heartening to read old letters by Russian writer Anton Chekhov (this time translated by none other than Constance Garnett).