Albertine Books, the bookshop of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York City, is offering a $10,000 prize aimed at “introducing American readers to the best French-language novels that have been translated into English.” Among the nominees this year is Bardo or Not Bardo by Antoine Volodine, who was recently the subject of a Millions piece.
New Prize for French Literature
Writerly Relations
In an interview with Big Think back in 2008, David Remnick said of Philip Roth that the writer “would have been my father had Philip Roth not been a literary intellectual but rather an orthodontist in North Jersey.” At The New Yorker’s website, Remnick eulogizes Roth's work upon his retirement. (Keith Meatto did the same thing for us.)
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Apocalypse Patriots
In The New Statesman, Ben Marcus wonders why American writers are so obsessed with the apocalypse. (A sentiment a few others have wondered of late, too.)
Ryan Gosling San Serif
Font geeks will get a kick out of this witty Tumblr site that mashes up glam shots of Ryan Gosling with lessons on the proper, and improper, uses of many typographical fonts and symbols.
Also, Empathy
Recommended Reading: In The Atlantic, Alaa Al Aswany shows how literature can inspire empathy by analyzing one word, “also,” in Dostoyevsky’s The House of the Dead. Al Aswany also has a new book out this week, featured in our latest New Release Day.