First things first: our brand-spankin’ new October issue is hot from the digital presses, and it’s more than worthy of your weekend perusal. With heavyweights like Yves Bonnefoy, Sjòn, and Yasutaka Tsutsui (among so many others!) you can’t go wrong, but in case you’re feeling overwhelmed, we featured five of our favorite pieces on the blog yesterday—check it out!
This week also marked the announcement of this year’s Man Booker Prize—and for the very first time, the award went to a Jamaican writer. Marlon James snagged top honors for his novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. Often poised as an “imitation-Man-Booker,” the prestigious German Book Prize was awarded to Frank Witzel’s Die Erfindung der Roten Armee Fraktion durch einen manisch-depressiven Teenager im Sommer 1969 (deep breath). The award was a surprise, but deserved—and we’re crossing our fingers for a quick and successful translation to hit English markets soon.
But while American National Book Awards have announced its shortlisted finalists, we’re altogether more interested in the American Translation Award shortlist, posted this week over at ALTA, and the list includes several friends of the blog and journal!
This week in translation: big, big news over at Amazon, which has announced that its publishing imprint, AmazonCrossing (already noted among translators for publishing more translations than any other literary venture) will invest ten million dollars in publishing translations into English. The venture even includes a “propose a book be translated” feature, which is sort of the translation-nerd equivalent of a DJ request line (squee!).
And this month’s issue of Poets & Writers features an in-depth industry roundtable on small-press translation publishing (our favorite!—sorry, Amazon), with representatives from publishers New Directions, Open Letter, Archipelago, Two Lines Press, and Europa Editions.
To venerate national literary icons: the Guardian reflects on Irish writer Edna O’Brien, who’s gone from “cultural outcast to literary darling,” and who American writer Philip Roth considers the “greatest living writer in English.” And in Abu Dhabi, original Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore is honored in musical and poetic tribute.