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Bill Marx
World Books Review: An Urgent “February”
Canadian writer Lisa Moore’s second novel, a harrowing tale of loss, solidifies her reputation as a gifted writer whose prose exhibits an urgency, precision, and sensitivity worthy of the legacy of Virginia Woolf.
World Books Review: The Hypnotic Monsieur Pain
Set against the background of the Spanish Civil War, Roberto Bolaño’s 1999 suspense novel is one of those rare page turners you won’t want to put down, even after you figure out that essential pieces to the puzzle are missing.
World Books Podcast: Of Naked Maidens and Sea Serpents
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The Italian Renaissance epic “Orlando Furioso,” was once a hot volume, at least among the literati, such as Shakespeare, and musicians, such as Scarlotti and Haydn. But Ludovico Ariosto’s long tale of knights and monsters duking it out largely dropped off the radar screen in the 20th century, though it was Italo Calvino’s favorite work of literature. Translator David R. Slavitt wants to rectify that with his English translation of the poem, the first in 30 years. World Books Editor Bill Marx talks to Slavitt, a veteran translator of over eighty volumes of poetry and fiction, about how his playful version reflects the giggly, surrealist mischievousness of the original. Download MP3
World Books Podcast: Pornografia Redux
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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 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.”
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 Podcast: Justine Hardy
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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.
World Books Interview: Homage to “The Halfway House”
An interview with Cuban writer José Manuel Prieto about the English translation of the late Guillermo Rosales’s “The Halfway House,” a powerful novel about exile, revolution, and mental illness.
World Books Podcast: Beautiful Genius
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Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) looked like a movie star and wrote like James Joyce. Lispector’s face is on postage stamps in Latin America, but her fiction is not as well known around the world. Benjamin Moser wants to change that with his new biography of Lispector, “Why This World.” He argues that Lispector’s Jewishness, along with her concern with the inner world of her characters rather than their politics, has stood in the way of her international reputation. World Books editor Bill Marx talks to Moser about how Lispector’s life influenced her writing, whether she was a magic realist, and why she should be read today. Download MP3
World Books Interview: Death and the Beauty Salon
Mexican writer Mario Bellatín’s growing international literary reputation as a leading Spanish-language experimentalist suggests that he’s a pop innovator focused on the grotesque, playfully obsessed with the consciousness of the outcast.
World Books Review: I Want to be a Showbiz Solipsist
Veteran Brazilian writer Ignácio de Loyola Brandão expertly lampoons the vapidity of celebrity culture, the tyranny of the photo-op, in his latest novel.
World Books Review: Two Volumes of Swiss Horror
Though separated by a century and a half, these two Swiss novellas detailing the outbreak of uncanny terror in rural communities paint surprisingly similar, and memorable, visions of social repression and religious hypocrisy.
World Books Feature: Summer Reads for the Adventurous
It may be summer, but your brain needn’t go on vacation. My summer list of fiction in translation that demands and repays close attention.
World Books Review: Driving the Mean Streets of Paris
He’s far too poetic to pass for Martin Scorsese’s Travis Bickle, but the ruminative nighttime cab-driver who narrates “Night Roads,” the fourth novel by Russian writer Gaito Gazdanov (1903-1971) wheels guiltily and memorably through the same type of hollowed–out urban apocalypse.
World Books Podcast: A Child’s View of Communism
In this World Books podcast, Hungarian writer Ferenc Barnás talks about his autobiographical novel “The Ninth,” which melds the sophistication of stream-of-consciousness with a child’s eye view of survival amid repression in an authoritarian state.
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