It’s easy to forget that traders and travelers a millennium ago were as tongue-tied in foreign countries as college backpackers are today. How convenient for Silk Road travels, then, to have had a phrasebook translating between languages like Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mandarin Chinese.
“Pardon me, where can I purchase a camel?”
The Crash
“Throughout the Crash, I wrote free-hand, not caring about the style or if something I wrote in the afternoon contradicted something I’d established in the story that morning. The priority was simply to get the ideas surfacing and growing. Awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere – I let them remain and ploughed on.” Newly minted Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro on writing The Remains of the Day in four weeks.
Tuesday New Release Day: Kang; Moshfegh; Ronsino; Xilonen; Cusk
New this week: Human Acts by Han Kang; Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh; Glaxo by Hernán Ronsino; The Gringo Champion by Aura Xilonen; and Transit by Rachel Cusk. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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The Ice Heats Up
You Must Go and Win author Alina Simone's essay "Why Do Russians Hate Ice?" has caused quite an uproar in the comments section.
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Drawing the Line
Recommended Reading: On the dark, subversive adult coloring books of the 60s.
Appearing Elsewhere
Millions contributor Sonya Chung will be reading from her forthcoming novel, Long for This World, at KGB Bar in the East Village NYC, on Friday, Oct. 16 at 7pm. With Sara Goudarzi and Daniel Meltzer.
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Herta Müller’s Nobel Lecture
Herta Müller's Nobel Lecture is now available in translation.
Weird: France & Belgium
Recommended recommendations: Weird Fiction Review has compiled a list of notable "weird" French and Belgian writers.
Oh Doctor
Recommended Reading: Frances Stonor Saunders on Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago.
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