Posts featuring David Grossman

The International Booker Comes Home

There is much to be said about the (fleeting) feeling of accomplishment in seeing a favorite longlisted.

With the upcoming announcement of the Booker International shortlist on April 7, our in-house Booker expert is here to take you through the impressive longlist, discuss the intersection between closed-door judging and fervent public online discourses, and the increased visibility of the translator in bringing these vital titles into the English-language sphere, Read on to find out more!

The International Booker Prize, like a number of other British literary prizes, has become a unifying topic amidst a very active online community. Twitter is the kind of place where bubbles of connections and affinities naturally form, but participating in this nexus simultaneously fosters a detached sense of irony that makes any earnest acknowledgment to it a touch mortifying. I am willing to take the risk of too much earnestness today because, for the sake of honesty, my relationship to the International Booker would not be the same without this community.

I became a regular follower of the prize after attending a meeting with the judges at Shakespeare and Company in Paris back in 2016 (a discussion I left certain in the knowledge that Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith, was going to win, as it did). But it was entering in conversation with other readers and translators through Twitter that made the International Booker an event that I await impatiently every March. We make a friendly race out of reading the entire longlist, and debates about the merits of each selection get unreasonably heated, as we work to change the minds of others about the books we love—or even loath at times. Not to mention that I would be very happy not to have the “what constitutes nonfiction” debate again in my lifetime, which was in full swing both last year, with the longlisting of In Memory of Memory and The War of the Poor, and in 2019 when The Years was shortlisted.

Perhaps more importantly, being part of this community has shaped the approach I take the reading (and reviewing) the list. Thanks to it, I am constantly aware of the labor that goes into each book, not merely the translation but the efforts by the translators themselves, often acting as both agent and publicist. For instance, when Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights won the International Booker in 2018, Jennifer Croft had spent a decade advocating for it to be published. Furthermore, participating even somewhat actively in the discussion happening on places like Twitter is to be aware of the uneven dynamics of the publishing world. Much has rightfully been said about the International Booker’s Eurocentrism (which this year’s longlist provides a refreshing break from), but at the same time, as an online participant in these communities, you see in real time that the Booker is probably replicating trends that exist within publishing at large. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Get close up and personal with global literary happenings.

Let language be free! This week, our editors are reporting on a myriad of literary news including the exclusion of Persian/Farsi language services on Amazon Kindle, the vibrant and extensive poetry market in Paris, a Czech book fair with an incredibly diverse setlist, and a poetry festival in São Paolo that thrills in originality. At the root of all these geographically disparate events is one common cause: that literature be accessible, inclusive, and for the greater good. 

Poupeh Missaghi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from New York City

Iranians have faced many ups and downs over the years in their access to international culture and information services, directly or indirectly as a result of sanctions; these have included limitations for publishers wanting to secure copyrights, membership services for journals or websites, access to phone applications, and even postal services for the delivery of goods, including books.

In a recent event, according to Radio Farda, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing stopped providing Persian/Farsi language services for direct publishing in November 2018. (You can find a list of supported languages here.) This affects many Iranian and Afghan writers and readers who have used the services as a means to publish and access literature free of censorship. Many speculate that this, while Arabic language services are still available, is due to Amazon wanting to avoid any legal penalties related to the latest rounds of severe sanctions imposed on Iran by the U.S.

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My 2018: Jonathan Egid

I relished the opportunity to read texts with somewhat more invigorating prose than typically displayed in analytic philosophy journals.

Israeli writer Amos Oz and Cretan memoirist George Psychoundakis are two of the highlights of Assistant Blog Editor Jonathan Egid’s 2018 reading list. Addressing topics ranging from Israeli politics and the death of Jesus (Oz) to Renaissance poetry and home-brewed alcohol (Psychoundakis), the two writers nevertheless share a sense of humour and a talent for producing powerful and thought-provoking texts.

Having spent most of the first half of the year reading texts about, rather than in translation, as part of my research for a thesis on the philosophy of cultural and conceptual difference, I relished the opportunity to read texts with somewhat more invigorating prose than typically displayed in analytic philosophy journals, and my summer reading list was full of translated fiction.

High on this list was the Israeli writer Amos Oz’s first new novel in over a decade, Judas. An old-fashioned novel of ideas in the tradition of Tolstoy and Thomas Mann, Judas begins with an end; the protagonist Shmuel Ash is left suddenly by his girlfriend, and then learns of his father’s bankruptcy, which forces him to abandon his promising studies. He takes up work caring for an elderly cripple in an ancient house on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and the narrative follows Shmuel as he is drawn into the troubled history of this crumbling house and its mysterious and enticing inhabitants.

The narrative is interspersed with Shmuel’s reflections on his now-abandoned thesis, giving the story—which takes place almost entirely in the old house and the neighbouring streets, cafes, and alleyways—a dazzling historical and intellectual scope, as Oz spans continents and centuries from medieval Al-Andalus to Galician shtetls and kibbutzim on the Sharon plain, tracing the fraught history of Jesus and the Jews. The focus of these reflections is neither Jesus nor the Jews, but on the eponymous Judas, or rather on the figure of Judas, the figure of a most reviled and hated traitor.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Our weekly roundup of literary news brings us to the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tunisia.

It is literary prize season and recent news that the Nobel Prize for Literature will not be awarded this year along with growing excitement for forthcoming award announcements have kept the literary community on our toes! This week we bring you the latest news from the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tunisia. Enjoy!

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-large, reporting from the Czech Republic:

April 4 saw the announcement of the winners of the most celebrated Czech literary prize, the Magnesia Litera. For the first time in four years the title “book of the year” went not to a work of fiction but to an analysis of contemporary Czech politics against the backdrop of recent history, Opuštěná společnost (The Abandoned Society) by journalist Erik Tabery. The fiction prize was awarded to Jaroslav Pánek for his novel Láska v době globálních klimatických změn (Love in the Time of Global Climate Change), the story of a scientist  forced to confront his own prejudices while attending a conference in Bangalore.

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