Review: The Possessed by Elif Batuman

In Book Review by Edward Nawotka

By Edward Nawotka Russian literary scholars aren’t known for their sense of humor, unless they’re Elif Batuman. Her new book, The Possessed, a collection of essays that can best be described as a series of academic misadventure stories, is possibly the best thing to come out of a graduate program in recent years. Describing a conference about the writer Isaac …

Israeli, Russian Win Best Translated Book Awards in US

In What's the Buzz by Edward Nawotka

By Edward Nawotka Congratulations! Gail Hareven’s The Confessions of Noa Weber, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu (Melville House Press) and Elena Fanailova’s The Russian Version, translated from the Russian by Genya and Stephanie Sandler (Ugly Duckling Presse), have won the second annual Best Translated Book Awards for fiction and poetry, respectively. Organized Three Percent at the University of Rochester, the Best …

Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

In Book Review by Gwendolyn Dawson

Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull Reviewed by Gwendolyn Dawson This collection of seven loosely interconnected short stories, by turns whimsical and menacing, examines Soviet Moscow in the 1920s. In these stories Krzhizhanovsky primarily focuses on the lives of displaced intellectuals — those who, after World War I and the Russian Revolution …

Idlewild’s Favorites of ’09

In What's the Buzz by Edward Nawotka

By Edward Nawotka I recently had a chance to stop into one of my favorite bookstores, Idlewild Books in New York City. Idlewild organizes titles geographically, rather than by subject, and the proprietor – David Del Vecchio has a near encyclopedic knowledge of the latest titles from the international publishing scene to make it into print in the United States. …