Friday Lit Links — Week of May 25
News, Reviews, and Interviews
The Man Booker International Prize has been awarded toPolish novelist Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights, which will be reviewed in our July issue. We also took a look at some of the other nominees.
Writing for Korean Literature Now, Kang Yu-jung investigates Korean historical fiction, including Han Kang’s Human Acts. WLTfeatured the article “Korean Literature and Returning Catastrophe”in our March 2017 issue.
Check out the podcastShe’s in Russia, which chronicles all that’s going on in the current Cold War. On the latest episode, Alisa Ganieva speaksabout her upcoming neo-noir detective novel as well as the current state of patriotism in Russia. Alisa Ganieva was ajuror for the upcoming 2018 Neustadt Prize,and her second novel,Bride and Groom, was thefeatured reviewin the November 2017 issue.
Philip Roth died this week, and the write-ups were of course numerous. Dwight Garner, critic for theNew York Times, provided a particularly notable one. Also, a timely defenseof Roth’s medium.
The Nebula Awards this week honored the bestin the past year’s science fiction and fantasy.
Poet Terrance Hayes has a new collection of poetryout next month, and he sat down with LitHubto discuss this and many other things.
Don’t forget to catch the Freedom of Expressiongathering in Istanbul this weekend, which is being held online-only for the first time in twenty-one years.
Fun Finds and Inspiration
If you’ll be near WLTheadquarters in Oklahoma City mid-June, come hear Tracy K. Smith,the 22nd poet laureate of the United States, and current Oklahoma state poet laureate Jeanetta Calhoun Mishgive a free reading to the public on June 14.
The 2018 Cannes Film Festivalwrapped up last week, with the Palme d’Or going to the Japanese film Shoplifters. Another film that screened was Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Keep an eye out in our July issue for a Borgesian essay on a Chinese translator of Cervantes’s classic novel.
If you like crime writing, this (part one of two) investigative pieceby theNew York Timesand ProPublica is absolutely chilling.
And finally, Merriam-Webster wants to know how familiar you are with the vocabulary of Vladimir Nabokov.
