News
in conversation with Jocelyn Lieu
Winner announced on March 10th
published June 2010
Couperus, widely considered one of the greatest Dutch novelists, gained prominence in 1889 with this psychological novel inspired by the naturalist style of Zola and the innovative characterizations of Flaubert. Eline, withdrawn and subject to depression, accepts the marriage proposal of a family friend, only to break off the engagement, convinced that her sickly but charismatic cousin Vincent is in love with her. Vincent drifts in other directions. She travels, dreams, and deteriorates. Moving back to The Hague, she lives alone in a hotel, where during a nervous crisis she takes what may or may not be an accidental overdose. Award-winning translator Ina Rilke’s new translation of this masterpiece will be a literary event.
Couperus binds both irony and spiritual redemption.
"—The Daily TelegraphThe portrait of their unfolding affair is a masterful observation of the beauty and illogic of romantic love.
"—Times Literary SupplementCouperus can fittingly be seen as the Dutch answer to Oscar Wilde.
"—ConjunctionsHis sympathy for the hybrid, the impure and the ambiguous gave him a peculiarly modern voice. It is extraordinary that this Dutch dandy, writing in the flowery language of fin-de-siècle decadence, should still sound so fresh.
"—The New York Review of BooksThe Hidden Force is a tragedy of colonialism essentially contemporary with, and fully comparable to, the work of Joseph Conrad.
"—Chicago TribuneSuperb. . . . Couperus handles his many characters with masterly ease and keeps his prose smooth, light, and flowing: Ina Rilke's translation cannot be praised highly enough. . . . With Eline Vere the estimable Archipelago Books continues to make available in English some of the most important works of European literature.
"—Michael Dirda, The Wall Street JournalElectric. . . . Astounding. . . . A pleasure we've missed for far too long. . . . It has the energy of the great Victorian novels without the melodrama. . . . Couperus is a fine, driving storyteller. . . . who wrote wonderfully about the small things that add up to a person's fate. . . . He's brilliant on the ebb and flow and fights of family life . . . The same detail that absorbs his characters . . comes to absorb his readers, too.
"—Michael Pye, The Scotsman
No Lebanese writer has been more successful than Elias Khoury in telling the story of Lebanon . . . Khoury is one of the most innovative novelists in the Arab world.
"—Washington Post Book WorldKhoury is the sort of novelist whose name is inseparable from a city. Los Angeles has Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler, and Istanbul Orhan Pamuk. The beautiful, resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury.
"—The Los Angeles Times
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 MannWhat an extraordinary writer he is!
"—Franz Kafka
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)
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
Like all great war books, Sarajevo Marlboro is not about war—it’s about life. Jergovic is an enormously talented storyteller, so the people under siege come through in all their poignant fullness. And one more thing: this book does not belong to the literature of complaining, much too common these days—Sarajevo Marlboro is a book for the people who appreciate life.
"—Alexsandar HemonPrehistoric Times