In his collection of dispatches from “the new Latin America” entitled How to Travel Without Seeing (trs. Jeffrey Lawrence), celebrated Spanish-Argentine author Andrés Neuman makes this curious statement: “It occurs to me that Ecuadorian literature is a literature of dragons. That it has waited for years, decades, centuries, holding its breath. A breath fiery with waiting. Capable of setting fire to anything. Tired of remaining contained within itself. A literature turned volcano.” Continue reading Guest Feature | Victor Meadowcroft | A Literary Eruption: The Triumph of Ecuadorian Fiction
Tag: found for translation
BookBlast® France | Paris Burning, Paris Brûle, Georgia de Chamberet
Is Paris burning? I arrived in the capital the day after the fourth Saturday of gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protests in the 8th, 17th and 16th arrondissements.
1848, 1968, 2005 . . . the French have a habit of getting out on to city streets to protest against the state machine and its politicians. The recently published work Une histoire populaire de la France du XIVe siècle à nos jours (A history of working-class France from the fourteenth century to the present day) by Gérard Noiriel is an essential read. Not yet available in English, perhaps a canny British publisher will pick it up.
Continue reading BookBlast® France | Paris Burning, Paris Brûle, Georgia de Chamberet
BookBlast® France | Top 5 French Reads June, 2018
During a recent trip to Paris I indulged my compulsive book browsing and buying by visiting some of my favourite bookshops. They are plentiful and varied since France enjoys a fixed minimum price agreement unlike the UK where the Net Book Agreement was abolished in 1997 leading to the closure of over 500 independent bookshops, along with chains such as Dillons, Borders and Books etc. The success or failure of a book now largely lies in the hands of supermarkets, Waterstones and Amazon.
Here are a few finds for the Francophile literary flâneurs among you.
@AuDiableVauvert @ediSens_edition @EditionsdelAube @Diacritik @Gallimard @GlenatBD @_WProject_
Shredded: Life After Terror by Philippe Lançon (Gallimard)
“My book is not a narrative about Islamism or the state of the health service — subjects about which I am not sufficiently well-informed — it is a personal and intimate narrative. It is the story of a man who was the victim of a terrorist attack, who spent nine months in hospital, and who recounts as accurately as possible, and I hope with a lightness of touch, how this attack and his hospital stay changed his life and the lives of those around him; his feelings, his sensations, his memory, his body and his somatic perceptions, his relationship to music, painting, how he breathes and writes.” — Philippe Lançon Continue reading BookBlast® France | Top 5 French Reads June, 2018
Review | Emma, Other Ways of Seeing | Massot Éditions
Summer is the time for comics and graphic novels. They are an easier read when hanging out by the pool, or on the beach, than that 624 page whopper you finally have some time for, now that it’s the holidays.
Comic Books & Graphic Novels
From Mad Magazine, The Beano, Billy Bunter and Asterix while growing up . . . to Charles Adams, Robert Crumb’s Kafka, Maus and Persepolis as an adult . . . comic books, and more recently, longer more complex graphic novels, are a delight. As culture has moved from being a print to a visual one, great novels like The Three Musketeers or Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way are now available in comic book versions. The trend is growing and business is booming. Those literati who turn their noses up at them are missing out! Continue reading Review | Emma, Other Ways of Seeing | Massot Éditions
Spotlight | Beauty Victims at Le Palace | 3:AM Magazine 2005
An early article, Beauty Victims at Le Palace by Georgia de Chamberet for 3:am magazine (2005) from the BookBlast® Archive.
During a recent trip to Paris, I mentioned to various French publishers that in the UK, nostalgia for the underground movements of the last thirty years is flourishing. Yet despite the outpouring of books, films, documentaries, compilation CDs and exhibitions like the Vivienne Westwood, it is obvious to me that one side of the London-New York-Paris “golden triangle” has been overlooked. Between artists there is always a cross-fertilisation of ideas, and the effect of the Parisian underground remains influential. Grace Jones learned devices for subversive performance during her time at Fabrice Emaer’s legendary club, Le Palace — the Studio 54 of its day — and Madonna was backup singer and dancer for disco star Patrick Hernandez when his hit “Born To Be Alive” went global.
I argued that people who enjoy reading, and relish the likes of Michael Bracewell, Ben Myers, Jeff Noon and Robert Elms should be given a chance to check out their French counterparts. But I was told by the French publishers that English publishers are not interested in a certain type of French culture, and translation is seen as a risky venture, so to pitch offbeat or outrageous books considered to have limited sales potential would be a waste of time. Bonjour tristesse. From idea to bookstore the reader comes last in a long line of corporate decision-makers, in a game of blind man’s bluff. Continue reading Spotlight | Beauty Victims at Le Palace | 3:AM Magazine 2005