Whatever your thoughts about the situation in Ukraine, you’ll feel for Year in Reading alum David Bezmozgis, who’s been writing a novel for the past four years that takes place in Crimea. After nearly a half-decade in which few people he talked to even knew where Crimea was, recent events shone a spotlight on the place, which the author had thought of as “locked in a dismal kleptocratic stasis.” (You could also read our interview with the author.)
Bad News
Sendak’s Tales
Check out Maurice Sendak's illustrations of The Brothers Grimm fairy tales posted on Brain Pickings this April. The illustrations were published with Lore Segal’s translation of the stories in The Juniper Tree: And Other Tales from Grimm. Our own Emily Colette Wilkinson revisits Sendak’s stories as an adult.
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The Finnish Word for Author is “Kirjailija”
Jill Timbers, the translator charged with converting J.K. Rowling’s next book into Finnish, will have to complete the 480-page project in just three weeks. She writes about the work over here, and then adds some more information on the Three Percent blog.
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A New Book Review
Sharpen your pencils freelance book reviewers: The Wall Street Journal plans to buck the trend of disappearing book review sections by launching a weekly pull-out. Robert Messenger will edit. The New York Observer takes note of the storylines in play: Rupert Murdoch once again bucking conventional wisdom, The WSJ trying to go head to head with The New York Times in yet another high-profile venue.
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Uprooted
What is deracination, and why is it key to understanding American fiction? In her novel Housekeeping, Pulitzer laureate Marilynne Robinson defines it as “the free appreciation of whatever comes under one’s eye,” inspired by the Western sentiment of “feeling no tie of particularity to any single past or history.” In the Boston Review, Jess Row states that deracination is “a long-lived and nearly universal trope in white American literature,” claiming it represents “an American ideal: not to strip from the roots, but to de-race oneself.”
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Jesmyn Ward Two-fer
Electric Literature’s posted a story by Jesmyn Ward, author of the reigning National Book Award-winning novel Salvage the Bones, as part of their ongoing Recommended Reading series. It’s worth checking out. Likewise, I recommend getting your hands on the latest issue of Oxford American so you can check out Ward’s inaugural “Native Daughter” column.
The Brexit Diaries
“This inconvenient working-class revolution we are now witnessing has been accused of stupidity—I cursed it myself the day it happened—but the longer you look at it, you realize that in another sense it has the touch of genius, for it intuited the weaknesses of its enemies and effectively exploited them. The middle-class left so delights in being right! And so much of the disenfranchised working class has chosen to be fragrantly, shamelessly wrong.” Year in Reading alumna Zadie Smith shares her thoughts on Brexit.
Language is Power
Recommended Reading: Writers are signing a petition in opposition to Donald Trump.
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Jim Crace Takes Home the IMPAC Award
Three cheers for Jim Crace, who just took home the 20th annual IMPAC Dublin Literary Award! If you remember our coverage of the shortlist, you'll know that the Harvest author beat out TransAtlantic author Colum McCann and Americanah author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, among others.
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