NYRB NEWS
Krzhizhanovsky’s ‘Autobiography of a Corpse’ Wins the 2014 PEN Translation Prize
NYRB Classics is pleased to announce that Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull & Nikolai Formozov, has won the 2014 PEN Translation Prize.
Each year, the PEN Translation Prize is awarded for a book-length translation of prose into English. This year’s Translation Prize judges were Ann Goldstein, Becka McKay, and Katherine Silver. Here is an excerpt from the judges’ citation:
“Fantastical, hallucinatory, and wildly imaginative, the book is rich in linguistic playfulness—part metafiction, part exploration into the farthest reaches and minutest details of reality…Joanne Turnbull, in collaboration with Nikolai Formozov, has produced a compellingly readable translation that is also inventive, that improvises when necessary and consistently insinuates a strangeness and beauty of other worlds, both literary and real…With her notes and her translation, [Turnbull] effectively offers us Krzhizanovsky’s genius—unrecognized and suppressed during his lifetime—rather than drawing attention to herself and her own considerable resourcefulness and artistry. This is a rare and welcome conjunction of a literary text that allows the art of translation to shine and a translator who has brilliantly met the challenge.”
To read the rest of the judges’ citation, visit the PEN website.
Praise for Gabriel Chevallier’s ‘Fear’ in The New York Times Book Review
NYRB Classics is thrilled to receive an excellent review of Gabriel Chevallier’s Fear in the July 20, 2014 issue of The New York Times Book Review. Here is an excerpt from Thomas Keneally’s review of Fear, and to read the rest click here.
“All the phases of this particularly horrid war, phases that we have become accustomed to from later writing, are recounted here in a remarkable voice…And, in this prizewinning translation by Malcolm Imrie, his writing still has a ferocious power…Chevallier’s narrative remains radioactive with pure terror, frightening in a way later accounts don’t quite manage. It’s hard to believe, given the powerful, almost American casualness of his voice, that this is its first American appearance. His tone is so inveigling and so amiable as he inducts us like witnesses into that great European madness with which the past century began, decades before most who will read this translation were born. It’s also hard to believe, once we’re deeply engaged with the book, that Chevallier is dealing with events that are nearly a hundred years in the past, deploying prose that’s almost as old. We are lucky his voice came through.” —Thomas Keneally, The New York Times Book Review
WSJ Book Club Discusses ‘The 13 Clocks’ and the Benefits of Reading Aloud
Event: Peter G. Platt on Shakespeare, Florio, and Montaigne at the Mechanics’ Institute
New NYRB Reading Group Guides Now Available
Three NYRB Classics Titles Shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize
NYRB is pleased to announce that three of our titles have been shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize, awarded each year for a book-length translation from any language into English. The following books made the shortlist:
An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman, translated by Elizabeth and Robert Chandler
Transit by Anna Seghers, translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo
Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated by Joanne Turnbull & Nikolai Formozov
Winners will be announced later in the summer. To read more about the 2014 PEN Literary Awards click here.
‘The Broken Road’ Shortlisted for the Dolman Travel Book Award by the Authors’ Club
Patrick Leigh Fermor’s The Broken Road was shortlisted for the Dolman Travel Book Award, a British prize awarded annually by the Authors’ Club to an outstanding travel book.
New York Review Books publishes The Broken Road, the third volume of Leigh Fermor’s trek by foot across Europe, in the United States.
Neil Gaiman Names ‘13 Clocks’ as his WSJ Book Club Selection
Last week, Coraline and Stardust author Neil Gaiman named James Thurber’s The 13 Clocks as his pick for The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ Book Club.
Gaiman wrote the introduction for the New York Review Children’s Collection edition of The 13 Clocks, and in an interview with The Wall Street Journal said of the book, “There has never been anything like this before, and there will never be anything like this again…[Thurber] takes such delight in the words. It’s like it’s written by somebody who wants to infect you with his love of words. There are poems hidden in the text. There are places where it wanders into rhyme and out again. There are all of the invented words. The story itself is nonsense in the finest possible way.”
Read more of what Gaiman said about The 13 Clocks here.