News
Winner announced on March 10th
Works by Elias Khoury, Louis Couperus, Elisabeth Rynell, Breyten Breytenbach, Joseph Coulson
published January 2010
First published in 1931 and now appearing for the first time in English, Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer is a disquieting anatomy of a deviant mind in the tradition of Crime and Punishment. Letham, the treacherously unreliable narrator, is a depraved bacteriologist whose murder of his wife is, characteristically, both instinctual and premeditated. Convicted and exiled, he attempts to atone for his crimes through science, conceiving of the book we are reading as an empirical report on himself – whose ultimate purpose may be to substitute for a conscience. Yet Letham can neither understand nor master himself. His crimes are crimes of passion, and his passions remain more or less untouched by his reason – in fact they are constantly intruding on his “report,” rigorous as it is intended to be. Both feverish and chilling, Georg Letham explores the limits of reason and the tensions between objectivity and subjectivity. Moving from an unnamed Central European city to arctic ice floes to a tropical-island prison, this layered novel – with its often grotesquely comic tone and arresting images – invites us into the darkest chambers of the human psyche.
Ernst Weiss is in fact one of the few writers who may justly be compared to Franz Kafka . . . This is easily one of the most interesting books I have come across in years . . . One is filled with impressions, stimulated, gripped by images, characters, and episodes that are strangely real but also unforgettably fashioned. –And, incidentally, it's all very Austrian.
"—Thomas Mann
Knausgaard joins the ranks of the greatest storytellers of our time. His glittering prose is purposeful, precise, and poetic. . . . There can be no doubt about his extraordinary talent: only the work of a master can be thought provoking on so many levels yet retain a lightness of touch.
"—Frankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungThe writing glows with an intense awareness of the here and now, and loving observations of landscapes and objects . . . this is an extraordinary novel, and completely original.
"—The Independent
Kleist’s narrative language is something completely unique. It is not enough to read it as historical—even in his day nobody wrote as he did. . . . An impetus squeezed out with iron, absolutely un-lyrical detachment brings forth tangled, knotted, overloaded sentences painfully soldered together. . . and driven by a breathless tempo.
"—Thomas MannThis collection of short stories, novellas and literary fragments . . . is impressive not only for its content but for its relevance centuries later. . . . A dark, charming collection of twisted fairy tales for grownups.
"—Publishers Weekly
One of my favorite writers in the world is Jacques Poulin.
"—Rawi HageOne of the finest and most underrated novelists in Québec.
"—The Globe & MailFor Jacques Poulin, in this miniature masterpiece of tenderness and humour, translation is more than the passage from language to language, it is the essence of our human condition: giving and taking, teaching and learning, experiencing and sharing experience, a love affair with our fellow human beings.
"—Alberto Manguel
Mahmoud Darwish is one of the greatest poets of our time. In his poetry Palestine becomes the map of the human soul.
"—Elias KhouryDarwish is the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people . . . lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant – and never anything less than free – what he would dream for all his people.
"—Naomi Shihab Nye
Every intelligent English-speaking reader must be grateful to Richard Sieburth and Archipelago Books for rescuing from oblivion this gem of factual fiction, revealing a Nerval poised somewhere between the subversive Diderot and the vitriolic Voltaire. The Salt Smugglers now has pride of place in my ideal library.
"—Alberto ManguelAn unjustly forgotten proto-modernist chef d’oeuvre by a French nineteenth-century master now splendidly Englished for the first time by one of our finest translators . . . what more could anyone ask for?
"—Ian Monk
The greatest Afrikaner poet of this generation. . . . No one elevated the Boer language to such pure beauty and wielded it so devastatingly against the apartheid regime as Breyten Breytenbach.
"—The New YorkerIn this inspiring, insightful and heart-warming meditation, Breyten Breytenbach has given us a masterpiece—a term I use with all due caution. He invites the reader into the process of poetry from vision to practice with a deep abiding humanity, genuine wisdom and compassionate good will spiced with humor. As unpretentious as a comfortable old shirt, this is a book to be read and reread, to be cherished by anyone who values the enlightenment found in great poetry of all kinds.
"—Sam Hamill
A novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humor.
"—J.M. CoetzeeStealthy seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end.
"—Tim Parks
Claus rages against the decay of the physical self while desire remains untamed. From the beginning, his poetry has been marked by an uncommon mix of intelligence and passion, given expression in a medium over which he has such light-fingered control that art becomes invisible.
"—J.M. CoetzeeWhile fully aware that such an honorable title can only be used in great exceptions in Flemish literature, I would call Wonder a masterpiece.
"—Paul de Wispelaere, Vlaamse Gids
Unai Elorriaga does away with the boundaries and coordinates of conventional literature and takes them elsewhere: to the surprising literary territory of a writer with no hang-ups.
"—Harkaitz CanoI read Unai Elorriaga’s latest novel almost without stopping to breathe. Breathlessly, yes, but not quickly, because Elorriaga's books are not the kind you read in two or three hours and put back on the shelf. It is a very good novel. Incredibly good.
"—Gorka Bereziartua, Eremulak.com
The greatest novel ever written about Istanbul.
"—Orhan PamukTanpinar's lyricism and resonant plot will leave U.S. readers wondering why they've had to wait so long to read this exquisite novel.
"—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Yet this is not a prisoner's book. It would be a crass injustice of underestimation and simplification if it is presented and received that way. It describes how the ordinary time-focus of a man's perceptions can been extraordinarily rearranged by a definitive experience… Prison irradiates this book with dreadful enlightenments; the dark and hidden places of the country from which the book arises are phophorescent with it.
"—Nadine Gordimer
Reading like the bastard child of Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek, Tranquility is political and personal suffering distilled perfectly and transformed into dark, viscid beauty. It is among the most haunted, most honest, and most human novels I have ever read.
"—Brian EvensonBartis at times puts one in mind of Joyce, at others of Kafka, at others of Roth, yet ultimately eludes all comparison by the strength of his originality.
"—Arturo Mantecón, ForeWord
Laxness is a poet who writes at the edge of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot: He takes a Tolstoyan overview, he weaves in a Waugh-like humor: it is not possible to be unimpressed.
"—Daily TelegraphLaxness is a beacon in twentieth-century literature, a writer of splendid originality, wit, and feeling.
"—Alice Munro
The strong, intimate voice of this gentle, canny narrator continues to stay with us long after we reach the end of The Waitress Was New—what an engrossing, captivating tale, in Jordan Stump’s sensitive translation.
"—Lydia DavisFor his U.S. debut, Fabre offers a poignantly funny, slender slice of a French waiter’s life...In Fabre’s patient, deliberative layering, the details of Pierre’s quotidian life assume an affecting solidity and significance.
"—Publishers Weekly
I cannot imagine what post-war Polish poetry would have looked like without the poems of Tadeusz Rózewicz. We all owe something to him, though not all of us are able to admit it.
"—Wislawa SzymborskaSelections from Vade-mecum and Other Poems