By Ed Nawotka Anchee Min’s new novel Pearl of China re-imagines the life of Nobel Prize-winner Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth) from a Chinese perspective for what is perhaps the first time. She spoke about the book, which is told from the point of view of a contemporary of Buck, at a recent event at the Asia Society in New York. …
Selling Amanda Abroad: How Transmedia Storytelling Challenges Foreign Publishers, Licensees
By Siobhan O’Leary Translating and adapting a book to a foreign market can be a demanding enough task, but when it comes to transmedia storytelling, the process of “translating” a story world and attracting a following can pose even greater challenges — even if a book or series is already a proven success in its original language. It’s not so …
How Will Transmedia Storytelling Change Narrative?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story discusses The Amanda Project and the challenges posed by translating it into foreign languages and transferring it into foreign markets. The challenges are not so much issues of translation, but of transference. How do you take a relatively open-platform, Web-based story, that is itself organic and changing, and transfer it into another culture and …
€100,000 Dublin IMPAC Shortlist Includes Three Brits, Two Debuts, One Irish Dutchman
by Ed Nawotka The shortlist for the annual Dublin IMPAC award was announced in Dublin today and includes eight titles (though the judges may nominate as many as ten). The list includes three Brits, two debuts (Bakker, Raisin), and O’Neill, whom the Irish are claiming as their own (though he spent as much, if not much more of his life …
Bloomsbury Qatar Parties with the Queen, Launches First List
by Chip Rossetti Not many new publishing imprints are feted with a launch party at Windsor Castle hosted by Queen Elizabeth II, but Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP), a unique joint venture between the Qatar Foundation and Bloomsbury Publishing, got the royal treatment when it launched last week. The Windsor reception was attended by Sheikha Moza, the consort of the …
Review: The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
By Gwendolyn Dawson Physicist Paolo Giordano’s debut novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers, won Italy’s premier literary award, the Premio Strega, in 2008. Now available in the U.S. in an English translation, The Solitude of Prime Numbers explores the poignant relationship that develops between two misfits, Alice and Mattia. Alice, an anorexic with a limp left over from a childhood skiing accident, resists …
Review: The Boy with the Cuckoo Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu
By Gwendolyn Dawson Jack, the first-person narrator of Mathias Malzieu’s most recent novel, is born in Edinburgh on an uncommonly cold day in April 1874. A clever midwife saves the newborn from certain death by surgically implanting a cuckoo clock in his chest to regulate his weak heart. Abandoned by his mother and sporting a loudly ticking clock for a heart, Jack …
Ilya Kaminsky on Translating Poetry
By Erin L. Cox In the March Issue of Poetry, Adam Kirsch did an interview with Ilya Kaminsky, the editor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. Kirsch asked a lot of questions that might provoke some other questions from you: is there such a thing as an international poem? Do you lose some of the meaning when translating a line of poetry …
Is Asia Underrepresented in World Literature?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story by Miguel Syjuco discusses changes to the Man Asia Literary Prize, an award that was designed to bring more attention to writers from Asia. Considering that some 60% of the world’s population lives in Asia, many of them eager to learn English and exchange cultural ideas, it brings up the question: Is Asia underrepresented …
Asian Prize Changes Seem Puzzling, But Perhaps For the Better
Editorial by Miguel Syjuco, Winner of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize MONTREAL: When news arrived this week that the Man Asian Literary Prize would no longer be accepting unpublished manuscripts, and instead only published novels, dismay broke out among writers. On blogs, newsgroups, email, and networking sites, the communal shock developed into debate. On one side, the door through …