NYRB NEWS
An Upcoming NYC In-Person Event with BBC Broadcaster and Composer Stephen Johnson
Stephen Johnson, BBC broadcaster and composer and author of the Notting Hill Editions title How Shostakovich Changed My Mind, will be at the Bohemian National Hall in New York on Thursday, November 18 at 6 p.m. ET for a conversation and book signing. In line with the subject matter of his book, Johnson will speak about music, nature, and the healing effects of art on the troubled human mind. Hosted by the Aspect Chamber Music Series, this free, in-person event will be held before a 7:30 p.m. concert called Songs of Solace, which will feature compositions by Shostakovich, Brahms, and Stephen Johnson himself.
To learn more about the conversation and book signing and to order a free general admission ticket, click here. Tickets for the Songs of Solace concert must be purchased separately.
Recent Virtual Events with Community Bookstore
Last month, New York Review Books authors and contributors participated in four virtual events as part of our ongoing series with Brooklyn’s Community Bookstore. You can read more about the events and watch the archived streams below.
October 7, 2021: D. M. Black and Edwin Frank on Purgatorio
October 14, 2021: Dash Shaw and Greg Hunter on Discipline
October 21, 2021: Benjamín Labatut and Lawrence Weschler on When We Cease to Understand the World
October 28, 2021: Hernan Diaz, Roxana Robinson, and Ed Simon on Edith Wharton’s Ghosts
NYRB Titles on the 2021 National Book Award Shortlist
Two of our 2021 books, Ge Fei's Peach Blossom Paradise (trans. Canaan Morse) and Benjamín Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World (trans. Adrian Nathan West), have both been named as finalists for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. Congratulations to the authors and their translators!
The 2021 winner will be announced on November 17. To view the other three finalists and check out the rest of the National Book Award categories, click here.
New York Review Books at the 2021 Brooklyn Book Festival
New York Review Books will be at this year's Brooklyn Book Festival. You can visit us on the Children's Day (Saturday, October 2) at booth #12 at MetroTech Commons, and on the Festival Day (Sunday, October 3) at booths #405 and #406 at Brooklyn Borough Hall and its vicinity. We'll have a diverse assortment of new and classic titles from across our imprints—and they'll all be available at discounted prices!
Two of our authors, Dash Shaw and Benjamín Labatut, will be participating in festival events on October 3. You can register for the virtual panel with Labatut by clicking here and find more info about the in-person panel with Shaw by clicking here.
An Essay on ‘The Stone Face’ in The NY Times
William Gardner Smith's The Stone Face, reissued as an NYRB Classic earlier this month, is the subject of a new essay by James Hannaham in The New York Times. Writes Hannaham:
Smith’s fiction belies a lifelong skepticism. His books, now mostly out of print, are sometimes referred to as protest novels, and while they tackle social issues, they’re far from prescriptive; none ever provides an easy answer. . . . The Stone Face represents the maturing of a voice determined to confound preconceived notions about patriotism, Blackness and sanctuary, and accordingly the story takes no prisoners, so to speak.
To read the rest of the essay, which covers autobiographical details from Smith's life and the historical and social background of the 1963 novel, click here.
Rave Reviews for ‘The Netanyahus’
Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus, published under the New York Review Books imprint late last month, has been receiving high praise from a bevy of outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR's Fresh Air. Read quotes from some of the reviews below:
“Riffing freely on a true story, this brilliant and hilarious new book takes a cozily familiar form, the campus novel, and turns it into a slyly oblique fable about history, identity and the conflicted heart of Jewishness, especially in America.” —John Powers, Fresh Air
“With [The Netanyahus] Cohen proves himself not just America’s most perceptive and imaginative Jewish novelist, but one of its best novelists full stop.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“With its tight time frame, loopy narrator, portrait of Jewish-American life against a semi-rural backdrop, and moments of cruel academic satire, The Netanyahus reads like an attempt, as delightful as it sounds, to cross-breed Roth’s The Ghost Writer and Nabokov’s Pale Fire.” —Leo Robson, The Guardian
“The Netanyahus, like Cohen’s previous novels, is driven by the momentum of its prose. . . . This is a surprising novel, full of quirks and explosive moments.” —Christopher Shrimpton, The Spectator
“Clever, funny, dark, deeply moving, full of references to everyone from Nabokov and the Marx Brothers to Jabotinsky and the late Harold Bloom, The Netanyahus is a joy to read.” —David Herman, The Jewish Chronicle
“Cohen’s new book is among his best: a fastidious and very funny book that is one of the most purely pleasurable works of fiction I’ve read in ages.” —Jon Day, Financial Times
“The Netanyahus. . . is a campus novel that is also a novel of ideas—a conjunction less common than one might expect. Luckily it’s also very, very funny.” —Len Gutkin, The Chronicle of Higher Education
A Playlist to Accompany ‘Finding the Raga’
Amit Chaudhuri, author of the recent NYRB title Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music, has assembled a special playlist of songs to accompany his memoir. You can listen to the playlist on YouTube and, below, read explanations and excerpts from the book to go with each song.
1. Bijoya Chaudhuri - Eso Nipabane (Tagore song)
2. Bijoya Chaudhuri - Se Je Moner Manush (Tagore song)
“My mother removed herself from the interpretation, putting the song centre-stage. The note must be allowed to speak for itself.”
3. Julie Andrews - Wouldn't It be Loverly (from My Fair Lady)
“There’s a tendency in Anglophone society to associate the ‘aw’ and ‘oh’ sounds with socialisation, politeness, civility. The ‘ah,’ in comparison, is unbridled. It must be contained. You could see My Fair Lady as a socio-spiritual allegory, where destiny and music are shaped by pivotal vowel sounds.”
4. Joni Mitchell - Song for Sharon
“Just as I’d been a Canadian singer-songwriter, I became, for a while, an Avadhi poet. I began to compose devotionals – the effect of my getting to know Meerabai, Kabir, Tulsidas, Surdas, and a poet I’d never heard of before – Chandrasakhi – whose songs my teacher sang. I didn’t imitate them. I became their contemporary, as I’d been Joni Mitchell’s contemporary, and Neil Young’s.”
5. Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral), 1st movement (conducted by Herbert von Karajan)
“While listening to the Pastoral, I was stirred by images of meadows, trees, weather, and valleys I’d never known – just as a period film is incomplete without an appropriate score, a score requires the right kind of visual accompaniment: not an actual film, but one you’re making up in your head.”
6. Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 7, 2nd movement (conducted by Herbert von Karajan)
“Looking out at the sky and the massive clouds, I could construct majestic inner narratives while listening to the Seventh. . .”
7. Amit Chaudhuri - Shame
“Until 1977 (when I finished school), I wanted to be a pop, then a rock, musician. My parents, probably thinking I’d become a chartered accountant, allowed me this fantasy. . . . I made progress on the guitar very fast, and started writing songs when I was sixteen. From a pop-rock singer, I transformed that year [1978] to a Canadian singer-songwriter in the making.”
8. Balgandharva - natya sangeet or theatre music in raga Yaman
“Something spiritual happens when a voice departs its accepted register, which is often determined by gender. This was true of Balgandharva. His singing had a bodiless freedom and pliability.”
9. Kishori Amonkar - slow khayal, raga Sampurna Malkauns
“I saw Kishori Amonkar on this programme, replying to a question and then singing a few notes without any accompaniment. I was struck by the dark flow of the meends or glissandos and the voice’s purity.”
10. Bhimsen Joshi - Jo Bhaje Hari Ko Sada (bhajan by Brahmanand)
“From Bhimsen Joshi’s rendition of a bhajan by Brahmanand, I grew conscious of an ambition that was shocking yet compelling. The bhajan begins, ‘jo bhaje Hari ko sada / so hi param pada payega’: ‘Whoever meditates always on Hari / will get the supreme reward.’ What reward? Property; happiness; heaven? The answer comes towards the end: ‘phir janam nahi ayega’; ‘then you won’t have to be born’, the incentive declared without overt excitement. On hearing it, the seventeen-year-old self’s ears pricked up.”
11. Vishmadev Chatterjee - fast-tempo khayal in raga Gaud Malhar
“One didn’t have to listen to the second-rate, let alone the bad. There was an abundance of the enthralling: Nazakat and Salamat Ali Khan; Kishori Amonkar; Veena Sahasrabuddhe; Rasoolan Bai; Jasraj; D. V. Paluskar; Bhimsen Joshi; Jagdish Prasad; Vismadev Chatterjee. . .”
12. Pandit Laxman Prasad Jaipurwale - raga Bahar, drut or fast-tempo khayal
“The rhythmic play of his compositions shows great intellectual powers; the melodic forms show not only mastery, but delicacy. Some of the lyrics, to do with Radha and Krishna, are sensuous and life-loving; others, as in a slow khayal in Puriya Dhanashree, give evidence of the world-denying impulses people mentioned. . .”
13. Bob Dylan - Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
14. Bijoya Chaudhuri - Tu Dayalu Deen Haun (Tulsidas bhajan)
15. Pandit Govind Prasad Jaipurwale - tappa in raga Mishra Sorhat
“He sang softly, without insistence, and almost never sang the same phrase twice. His aim, achieved with modesty, was to surprise and be surprised.”
16. Pandit Govind Prasad Jaipurwale - thumri in Mishra Jhinjhoti and ragamala (or “garland of ragas”)
The composition is set to a mix of raga Jhinjhoti and Manj Khamaj – once the ragamala begins, the singer covers Malkauns, Bageshri, Kedar, Shankara, Jaijaiwanti, Kamod, Darbari, Hansdhwani, Hindol, Bhupali, then back to Malkauns with which he began the ragamala (“raga-garland”), and then onwards to Yaman and, finally, Kafi. So the ragamala section covers twelve ragas in all. He moves, moment to moment, between ragas with very disparate notes, often via notes they have in common. He ends by descending and ascending through minute taans or embellishments on the twelve notes of the scale – an inhuman feat, like attempting to replicate, with added modulations, the final bars of “A Day in the Life” with your voice.
17. Mohammad Rafi - Kabhi Khud Pe (from Hum Dono)
Two soldiers (both played by Dev Anand) are having a drink. One of them begins to speak about the strange contingency of first meeting each other during this war despite having lived all their lives in the same town; about what makes men go to war; and his longing for home and loved ones. Then the other starts to sing at 1.50 mins.
18. Ustad Amir Khan - medium-tempo khayal in raga Ramdasi Malhar
“Some ragas can wait for centuries to be sung. Ramdasi Malhar comes to mind.”
19. Ustad Amir Khan - slow and fast khayal compositions, raga Darbari
“Among those impacted by Wahid Khan’s style and experiment was the young Ustad Amir Khan, the most influential khayal singer of the last century, who largely gave to the form the slow (to some, bewildering) meditative and digressive quality that marks it out today. Ustad Amir Khan wasn’t a student of Abdul Wahid Khan, but he saw the opening the latter had created, and opened it up further.”
20. Subinoy Roy - Bahe Nirantara Ananta Anandadhara (Tagore song)
“Tagore was a poet, which implied that his words contained a meaning that had to be forcefully conveyed and dramatised. Two artists took a different position: my mother, Bijoya Chaudhuri; and Subinoy Roy.”
21. Amit Chaudhuri - slow and fast khayal and tarana in raga Jog Bahar
22. Amit Chaudhuri - Summertime
“My subconscious could have been alert to these correspondences only because it had had its seed-time in metropolitan sixties and seventies Bombay, in a kind of sensory hum arising from The Who and Hindi film music and car horns and my mother’s Tagore songs and Joni Mitchell and Kishori Amonkar and sea breeze.”
NYRB Titles on International Booker Prize and Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize Shortlists
Congratulations to Padma Viswanathan, whose translation of Graciliano Ramos's novel São Bernardo (published by NYRB Classics in 2020) landed on the shortlist for the 2021 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. You can read more about the award and see the rest of the shortlist here.
And one more exciting bit of NYRB news: Benjamín Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World, which will be published by New York Review Books in fall 2021, is on the shortlist for the 2021 International Booker Prize. Learn more here.