Books
Is War Going Out of Style?
Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Joshua Goldstein of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, about his book “Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide.”
The Fall of Communism in Bulgaria
A new book by Kristen Ghodsee tells the stories of ordinary lives upended by Bulgaria’s move from communism to capitalism in the late 1980s and 90s.
Kids Books for the Holidays
This year’s selection includes new titles that feature stunning artwork, as well as some updated classics.
Great Books for The Holidays
This year’s recommendations come from writers and journalists including Granta editor John Freeman and writer Yiyun Li.
Iconic Paris Bookstore Owner George Whitman Dies
George Whitman, owner and founder of Paris’s Shakespeare and Company bookstore, passed away Thursday.
Reporting from Forgotten Latin America
Gerry Hadden has just published a new book titled “Never The Hope Itself: Love and Ghosts in Latin America and Haiti.”
Soviet Lines Way of Life in Grushin Novel
Award-winning writer, Olga Grushin, has written an entire novel about a defining feature of Russian Soviet life, standing in line. The lines disappeared as Communism dissolved, but their image, and the memory of them, remain. The book is just out in paperback, and reporter Brigid McCarthy tells us about it.
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.
Recommendations for children’s books
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The World’s Carol Zall joins host Lisa Mullins to discuss holiday reading suggestions for kids from around the world. Download MP3Check out the recommendations
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