World Books
Author Noo Saro-Wiwa’s Personal Journey Writing ‘Looking for Transwonderland’
Noo Saro-Wiwa is the daughter of slain Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. She tells host Marco Werman about her difficult journey to bury her father’s bones in his homeland, a trip that inspired her new book, “Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria.”
What’s Lost as Encyclopaedia Britannica Ends Print Editions?
Encyclopaedia Britannica has announced that after 244 years, it will no longer publish new print editions. The World’s Alex Gallafent visits a library to find out what’s being lost.
Mexican Presidential Candidate Couldn’t Remember Any Influential Books
Enrique Peña Nieto, front runner in the 2012 Mexican presidential elections, was recently asked to name three books that have influenced him and he couldn’t.
Burma’s Pop Music Industry
Pop music is alive and well in Burma. Ethnomusicologist Heather MacLachlan spent a couple of years studying and speaking to many of the people working the Burmese music industry. She’s written about it in her new book, “Burma’s Pop Music Industry” and speaks to host Lisa Mullins.
A Conversation with Israeli Author Amos Oz
Marco Werman talks with Israeli writer Amos Oz about his new novel, “Scenes from Village Life”.
How Sept. 11, 2001 Affected Writing in the US and Elsewhere
A new edition of British literary magazine Granta addresses how Sept. 11, 2001 affected writing.
World Books Review: An Authoritative Gathering of Modern Chinese Drama
Minor translation issues aside, “The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama”‘s excellent selection, colloquial and stage-friendly translations, and illuminating introduction undoubtedly make the volume the authoritative choice in teaching and reading modern Chinese drama for the foreseeable future.
World Books Review: Lodgings — A Generous Selection of Verse from an Intriguing Polish Poet
A problematic selection of poems from Andrzej Sosnowski, an impressive contemporary Polish poet whose writing combines antic playfulness and insistent earnestness.
World Books Review: Adonis’s Selected Poems — A Giant of Arabic Verse
Syrian poet Adonis has has been compared to both Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot in his modernist sensibility and influence — perhaps both in one person makes a better comparison.
World Books Review: The Weekend – A Portrait of German Guilt
In this novel, German writer Bernhard Schlink wants to explore the powerful guilt that the German people still feel after World War II, how they are still rightly disturbed by displays of nationalism and religiosity parading under the banners of truth and justice.
World Books podcast: Peter Filkins
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A few years ago, Peter Filkins, an award-winning translator of German, walked into a bookstore, read a few pages of an obscure German novel and recognized that he had stumbled onto literary gold. ‘The Journey’ was one of the 26 volumes penned by the German Jew H. G. Adler, a Holocaust survivor who sought to memorialize and understand the experience through fiction, poetry, social history, and philosophy. Filkins has now translated another of Adler’s books, entitled ‘Panorama.’ Download MP3
World Books Debate: The Best Translated Book Awards
Here’s the 25 book long list of the fiction finalists for the 2011 Best Translated Book Awards for listeners and readers to comment on, augment, and generally kick around. The point of the BTBA is not simply to recognized high merit (in fiction and poetry), but to expand the consciousness of the reading public. This is one of the few prizes in the country that honors original works in translation; at the very least, it should stimulate conversation about the importance (and neglect) of literature in translation.
What do you think?
World Books Review: A Glimpse of the Heart of Modern Pakistani Poetry
In all, the anthology smacks of the editors’ having taken the bland, easy way out at almost every stage. It takes second, third, closer readings to discern individuality among the Pakistani poets, and there are several lovely and powerful poems that emerge from such close reading, poems of love and politics and of faith — not the mere journal entries of so much Western verse.
World Books Remembrance: Heda Kovaly
Translating what became “Under a Cruel Star” by Heda Kovaly was a labor of love as well as a work of feminism. There were few memoirs around of a life that spanned Nazism and Stalinism. None was written by a woman.
World Books Review: Remembering “The Wrong Blood”
Balancing the domestic and the tragic, The Wrong Blood explores the ways in which political history and personal histories intertwine: the novel is an invaluable reminder of how, in the midst of war, love and continuity preserve the potential for a richer life despite the disaster.
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