7 results for "Literature"

Odessa stories

Babelʹ, I.
'Everyone makes mistakes, even God.' In the original Odessa Stories collection published in 1931, Babel describes the life of the fictional Jewish mob boss Benya Krik - one of the great anti-heroes of Russian literature - and his gang in the ghetto of Moldavanka, around the time of the October Revolution. Praised by Maxim Gorky and considered one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian literature, this is the first ever stand-alone collection of all Babel's narratives set in the city, and includes the original stories as well as later tales.
Pushkin Press 2016 221 pages

Of sunshine and bedbugs: essential stories

Babelʹ, I.
A new selection of Isaac Babel's 26 most vital and beautiful stories, in acclaimed translations by Boris Dralyuk Isaac Babel honed one of the most distinctive styles in all Russian literature. Brashly conversational one moment, dreamily lyrical the next, his stories exult in the richness of everyday speech and sensual pleasure only to be shaken by brutal jolts of violence. These stories take us from the underworld of Babel's native Odessa, city of gangsters and lowlives, of drunken brawls and bleeding sunsets, to the terror and absurdity of life as a soldier in the Polish-Soviet War. Selected and translated by the prize-winning Boris Dralyuk, this collection captures the irreverence, passion and coarse beauty of Babel's singular voice.
Pushkin Press 2022-06-28 256 pages

Ashes and diamonds

Andrzejewski, Jerzy
Product Description Originally published in Poland in 1948, and acclaimed as one of the finest postwar Polish novels, Ashes and Diamonds takes place in the spring of 1945, as the nation is in the throes of its transformation to People' Poland. Communists, socialists, and nationalists; thieves and black marketeers; servants and fading aristocrats; veteran terrorists and bands of murderous children bewitched by the lure of crime and adventure--all of these converge on a provincial town's chief hotel, a microcosm of an uprooted world. About the Author Jerzy Andrzejewski (1909-1983) published his first book, Unavoidable Roads, a collection of short stories, in 1936. Two years later he won several prizes, incuding one from the Polish Academy of Literature, for his first novel, Mode of the Heart. Ashes and Diamonds, originally published in 1948, was made into a highly esteemed film and was awarded the International Critics' Prize at the 1959 Venice Film Festival.
Northwestern University Press 1991 238 pages

In translation: translators on their work and what it means

Esther Allen,Susan Bernofsky
A collection of perspectives on translation, this anthology features essays by some of the world's most skillful writers and translators, including Haruki Murakami, Alice Kaplan, Peter Cole, Eliot Weinberger, Forrest Gander, Clare Cavanagh, David Bellos, and Jose Manuel Prieto. Discussing the process and possibilities of their art, they cast translation as a fine balance between scholarly and creative expression. The volume provides guidance on technique and style, while affirming for all readers the cultural, political, and aesthetic relevance of translation. These essays focus on a diverse group of languages, including Japanese, Turkish, Arabic, and Hindi, as well as frequently encountered European languages, such as French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, and Russian. Contributors speak on craft, aesthetic choices, theoretical approaches, and the politics of global cultural exchange, touching on the concerns and challenges that currently affect translators working in an era of globalization. Responding to the growing popularity of translation programs, literature in translation, and the increasing need to cultivate versatile practitioners, this anthology serves as a definitive resource for those seeking a modern understanding of the craft.
Columbia University Press 2013-06-04 264 pages

Wishes

Perec, Georges
"In the beginning was the pun," Samuel Beckett once wrote. And so it was that Georges Perec brought the good word to his friends and acquaintances on a yearly basis, as an expression of his best wishes for the New Year. Wishes gathers together these ten pamphlets of homophonic wordplay that Perec sent out from 1970 until his death in 1982, printed at his own expense in limited quantities. This paean to the pun consists of a series of short prose pieces, each concluding with a list of the everyday bits of language lying at their root. English proverbs, Latin phrases, the names of musicians, filmmakers, novelists and book titles are all fodder for Perec's homophonic translations: John Coltrane turns into an anecdote about a wanderer with a severe ring around the collar; Antonioni's first movie transforms into a prophecy of a murderous holiday; the phrase "All's well that ends well" becomes a pregnant cow named Alice hailed by a drunk Satan; and Maurice Ravel proves to be a warning against corpses with a predilection for root vegetables. These texts and their marriage of sound to meaning present a challenge to any translation, and bring into stark relief the choices translators are often forced to make. This English edition sidesteps such choices, offering two alternate translations: a traditional one focused on the literal content of Perec's texts, and another focused on their formal phonological play."--Page 4 of cover.
Wakefield Press 2018 229 pages

Microliths they are, little stones: posthumous prose

Celan, Paul
In the mid-fifties Paul Celan suggested that he had a mind for writing that "would be a bit more sober & more spacious" than his poems. And yet, in his life-time Celan published very little of such "more spacious" work -- i.e. prose -- except for two essays that were public award-acceptance speeches, and a few occasional bits and pieces often published, or better, hidden away in obscure places. It is only with this volume, edited by Barbara Wiedemann and Bertrand Badiou, that Celan's multifaceted achievements as a prose writer can be discovered. For example, in the early language games of surrealist inspiration. In the biting, bitter aphorisms, "counterlights" thrown on those concrete dates from and toward which his poems are written -- since the early sixties we are dealing with texts that explicitly exhibit their contemporaneity. Or in the poetological critique of the prejudices with which the volumes of his poetry were read. Among the most surprising and appealing of these prose writings are the narratives, the "stories" and dialogues with the background of his Jewish fate. This English version of Microliths follows the first German edition of 2005. The sole difference is in the final section, the commentaries, which is a shortened version of Wiedemann & Badiou's original commentary, with some additional material by Pierre Joris. The translator, who this year concludes a 52-year involvement with bringing Celan's oeuvre into English, & the publisher are honored to release this book -- the only major collection of Paul Celan's prose -- in 2020, his 100th birth- & 50th death-year.
Contra Mundum Press 2020 293 pages

Classical Telugu poetry

David Shulman
"The classical traditionTelugu, the mellifluous language of Andhra Pradesh in southern India, is one of the richest yet least explored of all South Asian literatures. In this volume Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman have brought together mythological, religious, and secular texts by twenty major poets who wrote between the eleventh and nineteenth centuries, providing an authoritative volume overview of one of the world's most creative poetic traditions. An informative, engaging introduction fleshes out the history of Telugu literature, situating its poets in relation to significant literary themes and historical developments and discussing the relationship between Telugu and the classical literature and poetry of Sanskrit."--Amazon.
University of California Press 2020-05-12 367 pages