Mircea Cărtărescu's "Why We Love Women" Just Out in Rome

August 11, 2009
Mircea Cărtărescu's

Mircea Cărtărescu pays homage to women—respectable ladies and sex bombs, girls of fifteen or fifteen billion, women who sleep with their eyes open and women who appear in your dreams simply “because they are women, because they are not men.” When the book comes out in English—and ...

 
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Norman Manea Awarded Highest French Honor

July 27, 2009
Norman Manea Awarded Highest French Honor

The French government announced this July that it has granted Norman Manea the title of Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et Letters, the highest rank in the Legion of Honor, in recognition of "his great talent and open, vigilant and humanist body of work written without concession."

 
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Summer Reading: Two Romanian Titles Make the BTB Vacation List

July 16, 2009
Summer Reading: Two Romanian Titles Make the BTB Vacation List

Best Translated Book panelists (Monica Carter, Scott Esposito, Susan Harris, Annie Janusch, Brandon Kennedy, Bill Marx, Michael Orthofer , Chad W. Post, and Jeff Waxman) have been reading like wild in preparation for Best Translated Book awards, to be announced by Three Percent / Open Letter in ...

 
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Gellu Naum Anthology Launched in Venice

June 23, 2009
Gellu Naum Anthology Launched in Venice

On June 11, the Romanian Institute for Cultural and Humanistic Research (which is located in Venice) launched a blockbuster bilingual anthology of writing by Gellu Naum, La quinta essenza / The Fifth Essence (Treviso: Editing Edizioni, 2006). The book includes a broad chronology of the great ...

 
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European Success for Dan Lungu

June 16, 2009
European Success for Dan Lungu

Dan Lungu’s Baba Comunista / Sînt o babă comunistă! / ЧЕРВЕНА БАБИЧКА СЪМ (Sofia: Faber Publishing, 2009; Iaşi: Polirom, 2007) will appear in Bulgaria this month. The Bulgarian edition follows publication in French, German, Italian and Hungarian. A Spanish edition is ...

 
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About this issue

This July, The Observer Translation Project leaves its usual format to present a special CRISIS ISSUE. Things are tough all over. Hard Times suddenly feels like the book of the moment. The global economic crisis impacts life as we know it, and viewed from Bucharest the effects reverberate in domains that include geo-politics and publishing in Romania and abroad, with the crisis at The Observer Translation Project as an instance of a universal phenomenon. read more...

Translator's Choice

Author: Stelian Tănase
Translated by: Jean Harris

From Maestro: A Melodrama. Episode 7

Emiluţa has an unfortunate thought. She’ll throw herself off the top of the building. Why? What the fuck? Let’s say for the cause of PeaceonEarth, for the slumdogs, Europe, for the lonely. Which is to say she doesn’t have a ghost of a reason. Viva Walachia! The way things stand, if ...

Translator’s Note
Translator’s Note: a synopsis
Author: Ştefan Agopian
Translated by: Ileana Orlich

How I Learned to Read (from Tache de Catifea / The Velvet Man)

The bearded man was the owner of an apothecary shop where he worked with two apprentices. Nobody paid me any mind, so I spent all day in what was supposed to be the shop. I say this because it was a large, dark room full of odors—a mix of smells from everywhere. The room hadn’t been cleaned ...

Translator’s Note
Re: Learning to Read, from Tache de catifea / The Velvet Man
Author: Gabriela Adameşteanu
Translated by: Patrick Camiller

Wasted Morning - Napoleon in Bucharest

“What you’ve got here is heaven on earth,” Vica says as she drops onto the kitchen chair. “But where’s your mother?” “At work,” Gelu lazily replies, leaning sideways against the door. “She’s doing mornings this week, didn’t you know?” He is tall and thin, with unset ...

Author: Petre Ispirescu
Translated by: Jean Harris

Youth Without Age and Life Without Death

It happened once as never before-y, ‘cause if it couldn’t be true, it wouldn’t make a story about the time when the poplar tree made berries and the willow tree broke out in cherries, when bears began to brawl with their tails, and wolf and lamb, unfurling their sails, threw arms around each ...

Translator’s Note
On Petre Ispirescu
Exquisite Corpse

Planned events in Cultural Agenda see All Planned Events

17 December
Tardes de Cinema Romeno
As tardes de cinema romeno do ICR Lisboa continuam no dia 17 de Dezembro de 2009, às 19h00, na ...
14 December
Omaggio a Gheorghe Dinica Proiezione del film "Filantropica" (regia Nae Caranfil, 2002)
“Filantropica” è uno dei film che più rendono giustizia al ...
12 December
Årets Nobelpristagare i litteratur Herta Müller gästar Dramaten
Foto: Cato Lein 12.12.2009, Dramaten, Nybroplan, Stockholm I samband med Nobelveckan kommer ...
10 December
Romanian Festival @ Peninsula Arts - University of Plymouth
13 & 14 November 2009. Films until 18 December. Twenty of Romania's most influential and ...
10 December
Lesung und Gespräch mit Ioana Nicolaie
Donnerstag, 10. Dezember, um 19.30 Uhr Ort: Szimpla Café Gärtnerstrs.15, ...
 
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