NYRB NEWS
Celebrate the publication of Nescio’s Amsterdam Stories
For the very first time, Amsterdam is in New York!
Nescio, the pseudonym for successful banker and family man J.H.F. Grönloh, has long been considered the finest of Dutch prose writers. But his powerful passages on the landscapes of the Netherlands and the very pulse of the city of Amsterdam have remained unavailable to English speaking readers. Until now.
Join NYRB Classics in celebrating a major literary event: the publication of Nescio’s Amsterdam Stories, translated from the Dutch by Damion Searls, and with an introduction by acclaimed novelist Joseph O’Neill.
On April 16, at 7:30 PM, Damion Searls and Joseph O’Neill will read from and discuss Amsterdam Stories at:
Greenlight Bookstore
686 Fulton Street (at South Portland)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.246.0200
Free and Open to the Public.
On April 24, at 7 PM, Damion Searls will read from and discuss Amsterdam Stories at:
192 Books
192 10th Avenue at 21st Street
New York City
This event is free and open to the public, but space is limited, so please call 212.255.4022 to make a reservation.
New York may no longer be Dutch, but this Dutch author is well worth celebrating—and we hope you’ll join us in doing just that!
And, please check the NYRB Calendar for events with Damion in Boston and the Bay Area.
Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April
The first English translation of stories by the great Dutch writer Nescio
Nescio wrote of madness and sadness, youth and youth lost, and courage and vulnerability with a beauty that few before or after have managed. His depictions of the Dutch landscape and scenes of Amsterdam—its canals, its streets, and its people—have no equal on any page.
Richard Howard and Marina Harss are finalists for French to English translation awards
Earlier this month the French-American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation announced the finalists for their 25th Annual Translation Prize for excellence in translations of French works into English published in 2011.
We are thrilled that Richard Howard, translator of Marc Fumaroli’s When The World Spoke French, and Marina Harss, translator of Elizabeth Gille’s The Mirador: Dreamed Memories of Irène Némirovsky by Her Daughter, have been nominated for this prestigious award.
There will be one Fiction and one Non-Fiction prize presented at the annual Awards Ceremony on May 23rd, in New York. Each winning translator will receive a $10,000 cash prize funded by the Florence Gould Foundation.
Gregor von Rezzori’s An Ermine in Czernopol praised in The New York Times Book Review
In his glowing review in the March 4th issue of The New York Times Book Review, John Wray describes An Ermine in Czernopol as a “mid-20th-century masterpiece” and compares Rezzori’s work to the novels of Vladimir Nabokov.
An Ermine in Czernpol is one of the volumes of Gregor von Rezzori’s Bukovina Trilogy, the others being Memoirs of an Anti-Semite and The Snows of Yesteryear. We’re offering the three volumes at 30% off their combined retail prices.
March Birthdays
We start off with William Dean Howells (1837-1920), who was born on March 1st, and whose Indian Summer, the story of a season in a life of an American newspaper publisher turned expat in Italy, is at once a brilliant comedy of errors and a charming, memorable romance. Or, as John Updike said, “A midlife crisis has rarely been sketched in fiction with better humor, with gentler comedy and more gracious acceptance of life’s irrevocability.”
Up next is Yuri Olesha (1899-1960). Born in Odessa on March 2nd to a card-playing father, Olesha grew up to be the author who decried the loss of the artistic freedoms before the First Congress of Soviet Writers. His masterpiece Envy depicts an anti-hero who both hates and is deeply jealous of his Soviet superiors. Envy is a darkly comedic depiction of humanity both its best and its worst, and, as was written in The New York Times, “Every page of Olesha demands to be read and seen again.”
March 4th marks the birth of Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851-1911). Hailed by Milan Kundera as “The greatest Modern Greek prose writer,” Papadiamantis wrote The Murderess, a tale of crime and punishment that will send chills up any reader’s spine. It is the story of Hadoula, an old woman living in the margins of society, who, rocking her new-born granddaughter to sleep, realizes that there is nothing worse than being born a woman—and that there’s something she can do about it.
Finally, on March 6th, join us in paying tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel Prize winner and author of many renowned and beloved works. We’re proud to have published in the NYRB Classics series his Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littín, a true-life adventure story and a superb work of modern reportage about an exile’s return to Chile.
Two NYRB Classics featured in NPR’s Three Books Series
Listen to Alex Gilvarry on Cassandra at the Wedding and Emma Straub on Great Granny Webster.
My Dog Tulip video on Amateur Thursdays
My Dog Tulip is J.R. Ackerley’s memoir on his German shepherd, whom he described as the “ideal friend.” It is a bittersweet retrospective account of their sixteen-year companionship, as well as a profound and subtle meditation on the strangeness that lies at the heart of all relationships. In vivid and sometimes startling detail, Ackerley tells of Tulip’s often erratic behavior and very canine tastes, and of his own fumbling but determined efforts to ensure for her an existence of perfect happiness.
In 2009 My Dog Tulip was brought to life as an adult, animated film, with the voices of Christopher Plummer, Lynn Redgrave and Isabella Rossellini. The film is now available on DVD.
Other J.R. Ackerley books, all from NYRB Classics:
We Think the World of You
Ackerley’s only novel, We Think the World of You tells the story of an unlikely love affair, following its course along its many surprising and heartbreaking twists and turns. The book was described by Ackerley himself as “a fairytale for adults.”
Hindoo Holiday
Hindoo Holiday is an intimate and very funny account of an exceedingly strange place, and one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century travel literature.
My Father and Myself
Ackerley’s pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self, making My Father and Myself a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man. This witty, sorrowful, and beautiful book is a classic of twentieth-century memoir.