World Literature Today articles from November 2008

World Literature Today archives from November 2008

China's harmonious Blacksmith.(editor's note)(Critical essay)
November 1, 2008... As the twenty-second Puterbaugh fellow in a forty-year tradition, Bei Dao joins the ranks of Octavio Paz, Edouard Glissant, and Czeslaw Milosz in being known not only--although principally--as a poet, but also for his contributions as a fiction...

Writing home ... beyond the U.S.(letters)(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I have to say I was a bit disappointed with your article on the top 10 nature books in English in your July issue, although the books are indeed fine choices (see "Essential Books: Nature Writing," 21-22). Perhaps I...

Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw.(notebook)(Excerpt)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... "Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partly crammed into one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of age. His sparse hair was almost...

Cormac McCarthy's The Road in theaters.(notebook)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's award-winning novel The Road is slated for wide-release on November 11. McCarthy's post-apocalyptic nightmare stars Viggo Mortensen (A History of Violence, Lord of the...

Chimamanda Adichie awarded MacArthur fellowship.(notebook)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie was recently named one of twenty-five 2008 MacArthur fellows. This year's judges praised Adichie as "a writer of great promise [whose] powerful rendering of the Nigerian experience is enlightening audiences...

Author profile: Jenny Erpenbeck.(notebook)(Brief biography)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Emerging German author Jenny Erpenbeck was born in 1967 in East Berlin to a literary family. Her grandmother, grandfather, and father were all published writers, and her mother was a translator. Erpenbeck started out...

2666.(new books)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... 2666 Roberto Bolano (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This posthumous work by the author of The Savage Detectives has already been lauded across Europe and Latin America as Bolario's masterwork. Now in...

Biogenesis and other stories.(new books)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Biogenesis and Other Stories Tatsuaki Ishiguro (Vertical) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Drawing from his scientific background, Ishiguro uses an innovative documentary style to present readers with unsettling stories of winged mice...

White Ink: Interviews on Sex, Text, and Politics.(new books)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... White Ink: Interviews on Sex, Text, and Politics Helene Cixous (Columbia University Press) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Spanning more than three decades, this collection of Cixous's interviews provides an unprecedented insight into...

Before Saying Any of the Great Words.(new books)(Brief article)(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Before Saying Any of the Great Words David Huerta (Copper Canyon Press) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This comprehensive bilingual anthology features the work of Mexico's leading contemporary poet and political activist, David...

Mix and match: Michael Chabon's imaginative use of genre.(Crime & Mystery: International)(Critical essay)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon, was one of the most noteworthy crime novels of 2007, achieving the distinction of being a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe award given by the Mystery Writers of...

Language Like Birds.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Language Like Birds It is Paris, Berlin, New York, it is any one of countless cities, any one of endless lands in which we find ourselves, our careless hurrying through crowds cut short, silenced in one...

And After Aquarius.(poetry)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... And After Aquarius It is the age of fish. Men crawl on all fours and are silent, unbirthed by the rising mud. The fish have won. Gunmetal scales engulf our towers, cut through the swaggering pride of hair...

Sea trade.(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Sea Trade Sri Lanka Drumming behind the night, the din of guns, the stumble of thunder at sky's split throat. Far out to sea, we watch lights flare across the bloated night. More arms, more bombs. The...

Beijing Coma.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Beijing Coma, by Ma Jian Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008 First aired on NPR May 26, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ma Jian is one of China's major fiction writers. He's lived nearly twenty years now as an expatriate in Europe. In...

Basrayatha: The Story of a City.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Basrayatha: The Story of a City by Muhammad Khudayyir Verso, 2008 First aired on NPR July 11, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Founded nearly 1400 years ago, the ancient city of Basra has played an important role in the...

Lost in Uttar Pradesh.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Lost in Uttar Pradesh by Evan S. Connell Basic, 2008 Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan Grove/Atlantic, 2008 First aired on NPR July 21, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Americans best know Evan Connell for...

Mosquito.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Mosquito, by Roma Tearne Europa Editions, 2008 First aired on NPR August 14, 2008 Mosquito, the fiction debut by Roma Tearne, a finalist for last year's Kiriyama Prize for fiction, takes us to Sri Lanka during the current civil...

A conversation with Etgar Keret.(Q&A)(Interview)
November 1, 2008... Etgar Keret is a leading voice in both Israeli literature and cinema. Best known as a short-story writer and filmmaker--he and his wife, Shira Geffen, won the Camera d'Or prize at Cannes 2007 for Meduzot (Jellyfish)--he has also authored a...

The pricking.(fiction)(Short story)
November 1, 2008... It began with a kiss. It almost always begins with a kiss. Diana and Tsiki were undressing, with only their tongues touching when she felt something prick her. "Did I hurt you?" Tsiki asked, and when she shook her head, he quickly added,...

Bei Dao.(SPECIAL SECTION)(Cover story)
November 1, 2008... Bei Dao is the most distinguished Chinese poet of his generation and considered by many to be one of the major writers of modern China. Born Zhao Zhenkai on August 2, 1949, in Beijing, his pseudonym, Bei Dao, literally means "Northern Island"...

The new Baltic poetry.(Special Section)(Critical essay)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Think of fish over-wintering under thick ice, wakening to cut graceful silvery strokes through fluid water in spring. Post-Soviet occupation, writers in the Baltic countries are moving about. They are free to...

Untitled.(ESTONIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Untitled anklebones vanish into the tall grass. a scythe cuts like a silver needle but the grass will grow back and remember nothing: the chirps from the trees and bushes do not seem as real as the flowers, ...

Poets' reality show.(ESTONIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... poets' reality show only two contestants are left standing the odds on both are poor if in the next show O doesn't get his 16-year-old girlfriend into bed and N that unfortunate loser whose attempted suicide ...

About leaving and returning.(LATVIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Over these flooded fields the silvered exhaustion of August descends. Grass beneath haystacks becomes dank and slimy as mourning. Chains wound about the necks of cows warm slowly against veins in the morning. A dull shine to the sea vessel...

Now.(LATVIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Now That stream in which I am destined to stand, from time to time carries into my hands living beings and events. Now I sink into reeds and awaken. I wait for your loved reflection to fade from the ...

Legend of the wind dog.(LATVIA)(Short story)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... To catch the slender necks of greyhounds in leashes. Freeing the ringlets of hair caught in the bright buckles. Attaching the leads, carbines jingling icily. Placing iron in a horse's hot, gentle mouth. Drawing bridle past the ears, stroking...

Untitled: The tiger follows Gandhi.(LATVIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Untitled The tiger follows Gandhi. No, no, he has eaten. He is a follower of Gandhi. Translations from the Latvian By Inara Cedrins

Untitled: Work is desire paused.(LATVIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Untitled Work is desire paused That can be seen in your wife's industry When she doesn't sleep with you You too begin to work Even though you don't want to at all In this way cities and airplanes are created ...

On Broad Back.(LATVIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... On Broad Back Sweated horse, barely clinging to mane Up from the ditch slowly conjured Without saddle, bare on the horse I'm still small Cain on a horse My mother will tell me, when Abel died The heaviness of...

Through the Window.(LATVIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Through the Window Look through whichever window At one you're afraid At the other eyes glow But I once lived in a country where the windows had fled from the houses Translations from the Latvian By Inara...

Untitled.(LITHUANIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Untitled look, my love, how the features of my body change when death's husking hand touches me : my cheeks sink, eyes falling into the chasm pull in the eyelids--like the stretched skin of a drum, which you...

Roots.(LITHUANIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Roots the earth's surface is woven with twine strings as if with a net from whose eyelets all of us have been pulled all of the world's meridians gather in the white string that my father and I have...

Days Like Never Before.(LITHUANIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Days Like Never Before I had already to believe that there is no essence of Buddha not in me, not in the small dog borrowed by my cousin's children, not in the bullfinch hopping in the chopped out buckthorns, ...

Glass.(LITHUANIA)(Poem)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Glass My beloved does not sleep--she knits Through seven cities beyond the forests she Moves speaks different languages when She buys food or wine reads Sweeps sleeps makes love with one she loves Makes love with...

"I'm a modern peasant": encountering Xiaolu Guo.(arts & culture)(Interview)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Some meetings take time to happen. About eight years ago, I picked up a Chinese book with an intriguing title in the film section at one of those megabookstores in Beijing: Who Is My Mom's Boyfriend? It turned out to...

From militant to writer: Sri Lankan Tamil author Shobasakthi.(currents)(Critical essay)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Shobasakthi's novel Gorilla, written by a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee and former LTTE child soldier, plunges readers into the village of Kunjan Fields, in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. In the essay that follows, Anushiya...

From time immemorial.(fiction)(Excerpt)
November 1, 2008... The following excerpt is taken from the opening chapter of Alexis Wright's award-winning novel Carpentaria, which is forthcoming in the U.S. (from Atria Books) in January. Wright took two years to conceive the novel and more than six years to...

A brief conversation with Alexis Wright.(Interview)
November 1, 2008... What recent book has captured your interest? I have been very interested in a series of natural-history books titled Animals. There are a number of beautifully illustrated books in the series, and the one that I am reading now is called...

Have I mentioned already that I was weaned of distant markets?(poetry)(Poem)
November 1, 2008... I Have I mentioned already that I was weaned of distant markets? A weaned baby--I was never weaned and never will be of my wish to strike the root of my soul in distant lands squander my capital on the beautiful, study...

Sinan Antoon. I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Sinan Antoon. I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody. Rebecca C. Johnson & the author, trs. Elias Khoury, intro. San Francisco. City Lights. 2007. xix + 97 pages. $11.95. ISBN 978-0-87286-457-3 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The secondary title carried by...

Jacques Berndorf. Bruderdienst.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Jacques Berndorf. Bruderdienst. Munich. Heyne. 2007. 416 pages. 19.95 [euro]. ISBN 978-3-453-00630-0 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Jacques Berndorf, the pseudonym for the journalist and author Michael Preute, established his literary...

Tan Twan Eng. The Gift of Rain.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Tan Twan Eng. The Gift of Rain. New York. Weinstein. 2008. 435 pages. $23.95. ISBN 978-1-60286-024-7 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Fifty years after the end of the Second World War, an old Japanese widow named Michiko Murakami appears at the...

Jacques Jouet. Trois Pontes.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Jacques Jouet. Trois Pontes. Paris. POL. 2008. 159 pages. 14.90 [euro]. ISBN 978-2-84682-246-6 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Confirming once again the notion that good things come in threes, the narratives in Jacques Jouet's latest book...

Fabienne Kanor. Les chiens ne font pas des chats.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Fabienne Kanor. Les chiens ne font pas des chats. Paris. Gallimard. 208 pages. 16.90 [euro]. ISBN 978-2-07-012035-2 Fabienne Kanor, born in Martinique, now living in France, received prizes for her first novels: D'eaux douces (2004), about...

Imre Kertesz. Detective Story.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Imre Kertesz. Detective Story. Tim Wilkinson, tr. New York. Knopf. 2008. 112 pages. $21. ISBN 978-0-307-26644-6 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Detective Story, Imre Kertesz's third published novel, which appeared in Hungarian in 1977, is more...

Rozena Maart. The Writing Circle.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Rozena Maart. The Writing Circle. Toronto. TSAR. 2007. 199 pages. Can$20.95. ISBN 978-1-894770-37-8 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "What is happening to our people, lady... terrible, hey!" an elderly man from an emergency unit asks Amina in...

David Malouf. The Complete Stories.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... David Malouf. The Complete Stories. New York. Pantheon. 2007. viii + 508 pages. $27.50. ISBN 978-0-375-42497-7 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This volume gathers thirty-two stories from four titles, representing David Malouf's work in short...

Bragi Olafsson. The Pets.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Bragi Olafsson. The Pets. Janice Balfour, tr. Rochester, New York. Open Letter. 2008. 157 pages. $14.95. ISBN 978-1934824-01-6 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Bragi Olafsson is probably best known for having played bass in the Sugarcubes, the...

Richard Price. Lush Life.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Richard Price. Lush Life. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2008. 455 pages. $26. ISBN 978-0-374-29925-5 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Richard Price has always used setting as a character--fully fleshed out, vibrant, quirky--and in Lush...

Durk van der Ploeg. It himelske oerwurk.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Durk van der Ploeg. It himelske oerwurk. Ljouwert, Netherlands. Friese Pers. 2007. 512 pages. 24.95 [euro]. ISBN 978-90-330-0589-3 With It himelske oerwurk, Durk van der Ploeg ventures into the genre of the historical novel, in this case a...

Philip Roth. Indignation.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Philip Roth. Indignation. Boston. Houghton Mifflin. 2008. 256 pages. $26. ISBN 978-0-547-05484-1 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Sex, in the body and the mind, has long obsessed Philip Roth's characters, beginning with Neil Klugman and...

Marja-Liisa Vartio. The Parson's Widow.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Marja-Liisa Vartio. The Parson's Widow. Aili & Austin Flint, trs. Champaign, Illinois. Dalkey Archive. 2008. ix + 256 pages. $13.95. ISBN 978-156478-483-4 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Starting out as a lyricist, Marja-Liisa Vartio (1924-66)...

Luis Fernando Verissimo. The Club of Angels.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Luis Fernando Verissimo. The Club of Angels. Margaret Jull Costa, tr. New York. New Directions. 2008. 135 pages. $12.95. ISBN 978-0-8112-1755-2 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Son of the famed writer Erico Verissimo, this much-admired...

Feridun Zaimoglu. Liebesbrand.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Feridun Zaimoglu. Liebesbrand. Cologne, Germany. Kiepenheuer & Witsch. 2008. 352 pages. 19.95 [euro]. ISBN 978-3-462-03969-6 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Feridun Zaimoglu is one of the new generation of Turkish-German writers. In his recent...

Dragan Dragojlovic. Death's Homeland.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Dragan Dragojlovic. Death's Homeland. Stanislava Lazarevic, tr. Willimantic, Connecticut. Curbstone. 2008. 71 pages. $13.98. ISBN 978-1-93189645-0 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Dragan Dragojlovic an economist by education and former...

Julia Hartwig. In Praise of the Unfinished.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Julia Hartwig. In Praise of the Unfinished. John & Bogdana Carpenter, trs. New York. Knopf. 2008. ix + 143 pages. $25. ISBN 978-0-307-26720-7 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The poems of the Polish poets Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz...

Bejan Matur. Ibrahim'in Beni Terketmesi.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Bejan Matur. Ibrahim'in Beni Terketmesi. Istanbul. Metis. 2008. 110 pages. 8 YTL. ISBN 978-975-342-658-9 The Kurds of Turkey's eastern regions have been poor recipients of positive recognition and little in the way of cultural empowerment,...

Ana Merino. Cell Mate.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Ana Merino. Cell Mate. Elizabeth Polli, tr. Brownsville, Vermont. Harbor Mountain. 2007. viii + 51 pages. $14. ISBN 978-0-9786009-5-2 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ana Merino's collection of spare, poignant lyric poems explores the idea of...

Jean-Claude Pinson. Drapeau rouge.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Jean-Claude Pinson. Drapeau rouge. Seyssel. Champ Vallon. 2007. 159 pages. 15 [euro]. ISBN 978-2-87673-475-3 --. A Piatigorsk, sur la poesie. Nantes, France. Defaut. 2008. 143 pages. 15 [euro]. ISBN 978-2-35018-061-8 [ILLUSTRATION...

Charles Simic. That Little Something.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Charles Simic. That Little Something. New York. Harcourt. 2008. 73 pages. $23. ISBN 978-0-15-101359-3 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As he completes his tenure as poet laureate, Charles Simic is at the peak of his popularity. His acclaim as a...

Robert Murray Davis. The Literature of Post-Communist Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Robert Murray Davis. The Literature of Post-Communist Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. Jefferson, North Carolina. McFarland. 2008. ix + 198 pages. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-786-43207-3 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Robert M. Davis's study of...

Lena Divani. Theatrika: I orea thymomeni, i Pentanostimi, Ikogeniako Dikeo.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Lena Divani. Theatrika: I orea thymomeni, i Pentanostimi, Ikogeniako Dikeo. Athens. Kastaniotis. 2007. 208 pages. 15.67 [euro]. ISBN 978-960-034604-6 Although the three plays in this volume were written (and some even successfully staged)...

Peter Gay. Modernism: The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Peter Gay. Modernism: The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond. New York. Norton. 2007 ([C]2008). xxii + 610 pages, ill. $35. ISBN 978-0-393-05205-3 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In this wide-ranging and illuminating extended...

Lorna Goodison. From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Lorna Goodison. From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island. New York. Amistad / HarperCollins. 2008. 288 pages. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-06-133755-0 Although From Harvey River does begin with the birth of her mother, the subtitle of...

Malcolm Lowry. The Voyage That Never Ends: Fictions, Poems, Fragments, Letters.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Malcolm Lowry. The Voyage That Never Ends: Fictions, Poems, Fragments, Letters. Michael Hofmann, ed. New York. New York Review Books. 2007. xvi + 518 pages. $27.95. ISBN 978-1-59017-235-3 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The title of The Voyage...

Mirjana N. Radovanov-Mataric. Cajiranci.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Mirjana N. Radovanov-Mataric. Cajiranci. Monrovia, California. Zora. 2008. xvi + 192 pages. $20. ISBN 9781-59898-013-4 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Love Affair with Life (1998), Slatko-gorke uspomene (2003), Bitter-Sweet Memories (2004), and...

The Rienner Anthology of African Literature.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... The Rienner Anthology of African Literature. Anthonia C. Kalu, ed. Boulder, Colorado. Lynne Rienner. 2007. xiii + 976 pages. $125 / 81.50 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 9781-58826-491-6 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Aiming to "represent the main...

Gabriel Zaid. The Secret of Fame: The Literary Encounter in an Age of Distraction.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Gabriel Zaid. The Secret of Fame: The Literary Encounter in an Age of Distraction. Natasha Wimmer, tr. Philadelphia. Paul Dry. 2008. 182 pages. $14.95. ISBN 978-1-58988-038-2 Readers' manifestos, hatchet jobs, lists, how to tall about...

The Gothenburg book fair.(outposts: Literary Landmarks & Events)(Gothenburg, Sweden)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] National identity is a dangerous and unreal construct, argued the Rumanian writer Mircea Cartarescu in one of the seminars at the lively book fair in Gothenburg, Sweden, this past September (www.bokbibliotek.se). His...