What do e-books mean in the context of preserving “lesser used languages”? Practically nothing. Whoever works in the book industry knows what the wider used languages are, and what they mean. This is especially true in the European context. Spanish, English, but also German, French, and Italian are those European languages that the global platform…
2015
2015, Literary trends across Europe
Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ at The Young Vic: A sexed-up parable of modernity
by Judith Vonberg •
As the actors took their bows, I applauded loudly, marvelling at the performance of Rory Kinnear as Josef K., a banker who is woken on his thirty-fifth birthday with the news of his arrest on unspecified charges and thus plunged into a nightmare of senseless, humiliating and ultimately futile judicial proceedings. Yet navigating the subterranean…
2015, Innovations in the digital field
Book talk – yesterday and today/ Büchergespräche, gestern und heute
by Lena Gorelik •
I was sitting on the sofa chatting to two friends about books – those I’ve read and forgotten, and those I have to read and forget; about phrases that would stand the test of time, and stories that had become my own; about pages that were torturously waded through like walking through deep snow in…
2015, The Migrants
Wrong and right – right or wrong?/ Falsch und richtig – richtig oder falsch? (1)
by Anna Kim •
On 5 July the following article appeared in all German-speaking newspapers: “Turkish nationalists attack ‘wrong’ Chinese In Istanbul, Turkish nationalists attacked a group of Korean tourists during a protest against the treatment of the Uyghurs in China – they mistook the group for Chinese. The police intervened with tear gas…” I hardly find this report…
2015, Innovations in the digital field
Digital Horizons II. – Online Popularization of Poetry, Part 2
by Laszlo Szabolcs •
Digital Horizons II. – Online Popularization of Poetry, Part 1 The second project is called “InstaVers,” and it is an Instagram-inspired initiative which aims to present and popularize contemporary poetic texts on the internet through social media. The project was started by Dóri Kele on April 11, 2014, the Day of Poetry in Hungary, and…
2015, Innovations in the digital field
Digital Horizons II. – Online Popularization of Poetry, Part 1
by Laszlo Szabolcs •
Poetry doesn’t sell too well nowadays. Perhaps it never did, really. Nonetheless, in the last two hundred years it was a highly popular cultural phenomenon, both for the elite and increasingly for the masses. Financially successful or not, poets and their often-cited, repeatedly hand-copied poems were known throughout the land, with iconic portraits of the…
2015, Literary trends across Europe
Beautiful Book Award/ Auszeichnung für schönste Bücher
by Beat Mazenauer •
Every year in various European countries beautiful books are nominated for an annual award. This is a celebration of finest quality books, creative design and traditional print craftsmanship. The typography may be as accurate as ever, the layout as original, paper as unique and production as intricate as can be, but the annual nominations offer…
2015, Literary trends across Europe
An important discussion in Hungary: Novels on Holocaust, Part 1
by Agnes Orzoy •
More than political speeches and formal acts, literature has an important role in sensitizing people to the suffering of others. Rather than doing that, however, the abundance of tear-jerker movies, streamlined teen lit, and often badly-written (and in some cases, forged) memoirs about the Holocaust have the opposite effect: creating what has been termed as…
2015, Literary trends across Europe
An important discussion in Hungary: Novels on Holocaust, Part 2
by Agnes Orzoy •
Published in English in 1989 by Macmillan, János Nyíri’s Battlefields and Playgrounds immediately became a success in the UK. However, this book is all but unknown in Hungary. Granted, it was published in Hungarian in 1990 (under the title Madárország), when the country was engrossed in the regime change, but even its new, 2014 edition…
2015, Literary trends across Europe
The consequence of history: European poetry as representation of the modern nation
by Steven J. Fowler •
Every nation’s literature contains within it multiplicities. Not only are definitions of these traditions based on approximations, that which has been recorded, assigned, that which has had the fortune of being discovered, but the very concepts around what actually makes a poem or a novel is ever changing. In fact the very intransigence, and ever…