Books
World Books Review: The Birth of Infinity
The contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math, the nature of infinity, inspired this intriguing book. The French school chased rationalist solutions, while the Russian mathematicians were reportedly inspired by mystical insights attained through their religious practice, visions into the infinite that led to the founding of descriptive set theory.
Patua scroll book
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Five years ago, one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded occurred off the coast of Indonesia’s Aceh Province. The quake triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean with waves up to a hundred feet tall. More than a quarter of a million people died, most of them in Indonesia. India was also hit. Now a publishing company based in the Southern city of Chennai is remembering what happened five years ago with a beautiful new handmade book. We speak with the founder and director of Tara Books. Download MP3
World Books Review: American Writers in Istanbul
“American Writers in Istanbul” should have been a fascinating example of multicultural literary analysis, but academic jargon and heavy-handed politicizing get in the way.
World Books Podcast: Pornografia Redux
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Download MP3
Hailed by Milan Kundera as one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century, Polish novelist and playwright Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) has not garnered the readership in English he deserves. That may change with the efforts of Danuta Borchardt, who has translated three of Gombrowicz’s novels. Her latest translation is of his 1966 novel “Pornografia.” (She won a National Translation Award for her version of “Ferdydurke,” Gombrowicz’s classic black comedy about the virtues of immaturity.) World Books editor Bill Marx talks to Borchardt about the erotic gamesmanship in “Pornografia,” the hazards of translating from the Polish, and why she decided to translate Gombrowicz in the first place.
World Books Review: The Creative Mystery of Clarice Lispector
In his superb biography, Benjamin Moser has done an amazing amount of research on the life of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, particularly on how powerfully her Jewish background influenced her fiction, so that the enigmatic writer emerges as a complete yet complex figure.
World Books Interview: Spreading the Word about European Fiction
An interview with Aleksander Hemon, editor of “Best European Fiction 2010,” the inaugural volume in an annual series dedicated to international writing. He believes that European short story writers are “not afraid of intellectually engaging the reader, of making the reader work.”
Children’s Holiday Books 2009
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
You’ve gotten gifts for pretty much everyone on your list…or at least you’ve thought about what to get them. But here’s the problem…what about the kids? You’ve ruled out the zhu-zhu pet … Elmo Live … and anything to do with “High School Musical.” Well, you can’t go wrong with a good book. The World’s Carol Zall has been talking with writers and getting suggestions. Download MP3
Holiday Books 2009
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Chanukah has begun. Christmas will be here before you know it. And we’ve got four gift ideas for the readers on your list. Our book critic Christopher Merrill is at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Marco Werman speaks with him. Download MP3
World Books: International Reads for the Holidays
“Your Face Tomorrow, Volume Three: Poison, Shadow, and Farewell”: the final volume in Javier Marías’s trio of spy novels extraordinaire is part of World Book’s idiosyncratic round-up of first-rate international literary stocking stuffers.
World Books Review: Best European Fiction 2010
Overall, this debut volume in an annual anthology series dedicated to new fiction from Europe proves to be interesting and strong, featuring a range of voices from 35 countries including such celebrated writers as Alasdair Gray, Viktor Pelevin, and David Albahari.
Tokyo Vice
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Marco Werman talks with “Tokyo Vice” author Jake Adelstein. Adelstein’s new book chronicles his years covering Japanese organized crime and vice as a reporter for Japan’s Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper. Download MP3
Jake Adelstein reads an excerpt:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Download MP3
Famed Chinese translator dies
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Download MP3
Anchor Marco Werman talks with Simon Winchester about the legacy of Chinese translator Yang Xianyi, who died in Beijing yesterday at the age of 94.
World Books Review: Reading Jung’s “Red Book”
An examination of the recent publication and translation into English (ninety years after it was begun) of Carl Gustav Jung’s confessional meditation “The Red Book.” The volume stands in a select company of books that exerted an enormous influence on social and intellectual history even while it remained unpublished.
World Books Review: Facing the Devils in the Mirror
The all-too-human protagonists of Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya, such as the spoiled rich girl at the center of his latest novel in translation, The She-Devil in the Mirror, can’t help but absorb the inhuman culture of violence around them.
World Books Podcast: Justine Hardy
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Download MP3
British journalist and author Justine Hardy has spent the last 20 years writing about Kashmir, a country of astonishing natural beauty caught in a violent territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. “In the Valley of Mist: One Family in a Changing World” looks at how a real-life middle-class Kashmiri family, the Dars, deal with their country’s turmoil and prejudices. World Books editor Bill Marx talks to Hardy about what she calls “Jihad Inc,” the responsibilities of storytelling in a troubled region, and the current state of life in Kashmir.
Additional funding for PRI's The World is provided by:
