Appeal to Save the “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”

There have already been countless victims of this recession and, of course, the human cost is the aspect that quite rightly ought to (and does) attract most attention.  But as the ripples spread wider, the squeeze is starting to be felt in cultural terms as well.
The latest potential victim is the Italian Dictionary of National [...]

A Gude Cause: October 1909 – 10 October 2009

Just a quick post on this because it’s been written about by much better-qualified people elsewhere: here’s the website, and also this piece by Elspeth King.
This afternoon about 2,500 women of all ages and a fair number of men, children and babies (plus a few dogs – including Tess who wasn’t at all happy about [...]

At two ends of the publishing continuum: Harvill Secker’s celebrates its (cumulative) centenary and Vagabond Voices

‘International Writing with a Wayward Streak’ is the headline in Booktrade.info announcing Harvill Secker’s approaching centenary celebrations in 2010.
From January through to December 2010, the Random House imprint Harvill Secker will be celebrating a centenary of publishing. Harvill Secker has published some of the most iconic and inspiring literary works of the last 100 years, [...]

Muggle and Quidditch in 67 languages, and counting…

At a unique event, summarising a 10-year translating phenomenon, all the translators of the Harry Potter books met in Paris to discuss “what was lost in translation” and to celebrate their shared experience.
To mark international literacy day on 8th September, a Unesco-backed inititiative turned Paris’s Institut de France into a Hogwarth’s workshop as scores of [...]

Happy birthday, Samuel

I missed his birthday on 7 September, but there’s a chance for more cake and 300 candles on 18 September (apparently after the change of calendar in 1752 he celebrated his birthday on 18 September).
There’s been so many wonderful Johnson features on radio and in the press, but I just wanted to comment on a [...]

In memory of Janet Coats – 90th Anniversary of Scotland’s oldest Literary Prize

It’s not every day that you get a chance to claim a bit of Scottish literary history!  This Friday – 21 August – marks the 90th anniversary of the presentation of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize which was set up by my cousin, Janet Tait Black neé Coats.  The awards – one for biography [...]

Italy’s freedom of press: Umberto Eco on why saying ‘No’ matters

To put Berlusconi’s “posturing” and veiled threats against the Italian press in context (in particular his recent response that it was time to “shut the mouths” of those who spoke of “crisis here and crisis there”, and that companies should withdraw advertising from newspapers that spread gloom), I think this article is worth reproducing in [...]

Žižek gets better and better: Berlusconi in Tehran

Only a few days after watching Žižek (sorry, about the pronunciation … but as he himself said to an incredibly dumb US interviewer, he prefers it the “wrong way”, as it makes him paranoic if he hears said the right way!) on BBC’s excellent Terror: Robespierre and the French Revolution, the co-director of the International [...]

Excellent BBC programme to mark 14 July: “Terror: Robespierre and the French Revolution”

I was transfixed by this excellent programme with its interweaving voices of historians and philosophers (Simon Schama and Slavoj Zizek offer very different interpretations of the Jacobin Revolutionary mindset), other commentators and the prize-winning novelist Hilary Mantel – whose novel A Place of Greater Safety is set in Revolutionary France.  For once, the “drama” in [...]

Beelzebub: a controversial novel to look forward to

Youssef Ziedan’s Azazeel (or Azazil) – to give it its original title – won the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction and will be published as Beelzebub by Atlantic Books in 2010.

The availability of money for the translation – courtesy of IPAF – is a major boost to opening the doors to this rich literary [...]