Alain Bihr‘s contempt for the term “human capital” is almost tangible: “As if capital, that cold monster, that accumulation of dead work, which lives only because it constantly preys on living work and exploits the labour of billions of people whose lives mean nothing to it, condemning more billions to poverty, insecurity, unemployment and socio-economic […]
How do you choose what writers to read? Or more specifically, how do you choose from those writers that you know you’re ‘supposed’ to read? The dead and dusty ones from the canon. I take shortcuts, which is probably the reason why Cervantes has never darkened my door. Short stories have many virtues, but they’re […]
Poland took delivery of its first Hercules transport plane last week. The aeroplane is nearly 40 years old and attracted much derision from the ever-independent Polish media. For instance, TVN, the fearless private sector news broadcaster, detailed the history of the aeroplane in a lengthy news piece. As long ago as 1983, they said, it […]
A good starting place to talk about Steven Galloway’s novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo, is a 1976 interview with American author John Cheever. Cheever, asked by the Paris Review’s Annette Grant about the trend for novelists to write journalism, responded angrily “I don’t like your question. Fiction must compete with first-rate reporting. If you cannot […]
For many readers, particularly outside the United States, John Wray’s name will be a new one, despite the fact that this 37 year old Brooklyn-based writer has already published two critically acclaimed novels, The Right Hand of Sleep, and Canaan’s Tongue, has won a Whiting Writers’ Award, and in 2007 was chosen by Granta for […]
Here’s a report from the Irish national broadcaster’s news site which may be beyond parody but by jingo that isn’t going to stop me. For those unfamiliar with the subject, two pieces of background information: (1) the Irish economy has hit a brick wall (2) “Tánaiste” is the Irish name for the post of deputy […]
What with Sylwia Chutnik, Michał Witkowski and Dorota Masłowska’s Między nami dobrze jest, I’ve had quite a run of luck with books and plays by young writers lately. It’s not all good news on the young writing scene, though. Take novelist Jacek Dehnel (b. 1980), who wrote an article for Polityka a couple of weeks […]
Novelists Paul Auster and David Grossman appeared together last night on Italian television in a show of solidarity with author Roberto Saviano, who for the last three years has lived under police protection after receiving death threats from the Italian criminal organisation the camorra. They join a growing list, including Salman Rushdie, who have appeared […]
Michal Witkowski’s Lubiewo (2005) – though much concerned with the passage of time, especially from communist Poland to the present, glorious, third republic – probably fits the description of “queer literature.” The Lubiewo of the title is a beach he goes to where he meets, among many others, a group of complex-free, open, right-on, emancipated […]