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Bill Marx
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 podcast: Gish Jen
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The title of Chinese-American writer Gish Jen’s latest novel, World And Town, suggests the story’s international resonance. Set in a small town in New England, the book examines the growing pressures — global and local, religious and technological — on the rural American experience. World Books editor Bill Marx spoke to Jen about what her novel says about the impact of the world on the American small town in the new millennium. Download MP3World Books podcast: Per Petterson
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Norwegian author Per Petterson’s 2007 novel Out Stealing Horses won him a worldwide readership as well as garnering him a number of major book prizes. His latest novel, I Curse the River of Time, continues the writer’s lyrical exploration of the bedevilments of mortality and time. World Books editor Bill Marx spoke to Petterson about his new book, the challenges of translation, and the reasons behind the current vogue for Scandinavian fiction. Download MP3World Books Review: The Early Doom and Gloom of a Spanish Genius
In this story collection mostly made up of tales written early in his career, Spain’s greatest living author, Javier Marías, wears his influences, particularly Jorge Luis Borges, on his sleeve.
World Books Review: Life Under Mao
Bi Feiyu’s satiric novel about village life during the Cultural Revolution is uneven, but he displays an uncanny understanding of young women and the way they use their sexuality to try to take control of their lives.
Job: The Story of a Simple Man
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German translator Ross Benjamin won the 2010 Woolf prize for his version in English of the critical study Speak, Nabokov. His latest translation, Joseph Roth’s 1930 novel Job: The Story of a Simple Man, comes from Archipelago Books. One of the finest literary evocations of the world of Eastern European Jewry obliterated by World War II, Job was a bestseller in 1931 when it was first appeared in English. Still, the novel has not gotten the attention it deserves, even though Roth (1894-1939) is now recognized as one of the major German writers of the 20th century. Benjamin’s translation does this masterpiece, a modern retelling of the biblical story of Job, justice in English. World Books editor Bill Marx spoke to Benjamin about the challenges of translating Roth. Download MP3World Books Podcast: Sefi Atta
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In Africa and Europe, Nigerian writer Sefi Atta’s reputation is stellar. Her novel “Everything Good Will Come” won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. And her recently published collection of short stories. “News From Home,” garnered the 2009 NOMA Award for Publishing. But she has yet to garner the critical attention she deserves in America, though she has lived in Mississippi for over a decade. Bill Marx spoke to Atta about what roles religion and feminism play in her fiction and why her complex vision of Africa defies popular expectations. Download MP3
World Books: Summer Reads for Adventurous Minds
Who says your brain should go on vacation during the summer? An eccentric and eclectic list of literature in translation that demands and repays close attention, on the beach or anywhere else.
World Books Podcast: Filipino author Miguel Syjuco
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For many readers, Filipino literature is about local color, lush descriptions of an exotic and often dreamy landscape. Miguel Syjuco challenges that pastoral vision with his first novel, Ilustrado, which recently won the Man Asian Literary Prize. An ambitious meditation on turbulent decades of Filipino culture and politics, the novel includes emails, blog entries, news reports, and extracts from the fiction and journalism of an imaginary literary lion. His mysterious death triggers a quest to find his final manuscript, which is rumored to be an explosive tell-all. World Books editor Bill Marx spoke to Syjuco about what his complex novel says about the past and future of the Philippines. Download MP3
World Books Podcast: Eshkol Nevo’s novel “Homesick”
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When it was published in Israel in 2004, Eshkol Nevo’s novel “Homesick” tackled a taboo topic in his homeland. The story, which is set in a small neighborhood outside of Jerusalem, includes a sympathetic look at a Palestinian construction worker who becomes obsessed with entering the home his family was evicted from in 1948. To Nevo’s surprise, “Homesick” became a best-seller and is now assigned reading in high schools and universities around Israel. An English translation of the book (by Sondra Silverston) is now available from Dalkey Archive Press. World Books editor Bill Marx spoke to Nevo about his novel’s surprising reception in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East. Download MP3
World Books Interview: Nino Ricci and ‘The Origin of Species’
In this ambitious and provocative novel Canadian writer Nino Ricci looks at how the ideas of Charles Darwin shape the consciousness of Alex, a graduate student in Montreal during the 1980s who is trying to use evolutionary theory to make sense of his wayward life and floundering literary studies.
World Books Podcast: 100th anniversary of the death of Mark Twain
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April 21st marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Mark Twain, an American icon who made an indelible impression on the world before and after his demise. The Library of America has published two volumes that remind us of Twain’s influence on other countries. One is a collection of Twain’s travel writing, featuring “A Tramp Abroad,” “Following the Equator,” and uncollected pieces. The press is also publishing “The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Works,” which contains a selection of international responses to Twain, visual as well as literary. World Books editor Bill Marx spoke to the editor of the latter volume, Stanford University professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin, about Twain’s impressions of the world and the world’s impressions of Twain.The sweet smell of literature
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In the not too distant future the majority of readers might read their books electronically, on Kindles, iPads, and the like. In the meantime, though, the paper kind populates bookstores and libraries. And the older a book is, the smellier it is. The World’s Alex Gallafent explores those odors for us. Download MP3 (Photo: Alex Gallafent)
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