Stories about Literature from June, 2006
Antigua: New literary festival
Simone Champagnie announces the inaugural Caribbean Literary Festival, set to take place in Antigua in November 2006.
Brazil: Caetano Veloso's Biography
France-based Togolese bloggerKangni Alem writes (Fr): “Even though modesty is not Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso's forte, he has great talent as an agitator. He also exhibits phenomenal memory in the intellectual autobiography that was prompted by the New York Times to recount the birth of the artistic and musical movement...
Voices from Central Asia and the Caucasus
Standing at the edge of the abyss close to Kyrgyzstan's Pik Lenin, let's not waste any time to present you the highlights from two weeks of online conversation from Central Asia and the Caucasus. Armenia: Onnik Krikorian posts another one of his indispensable roundups from the Armenian blogosphere on his...
Appreciating Caribbean writing
A New York Times article about a new anthology of Jamaican writing published by a US press gets Geoffrey Philp thinking about why North Americans may not be as open to Caribbean writing as their British counterparts: “The reader has to be willing to shed notions of what is and...
China: What expats read
What do expats in China most like to read? The ‘hottest blog’ for June at ChinaBlogList.org was Sex and Shanghai, a British man's explicit accounts of all the woman he has sex with.
Why No Mention of Slavery in African and Haitian Fiction?
Why is there so little mention of slavery in African and Haitian Fiction? That is the question that Togolese France-based blogger Kangni Alem addresses in a prolific and well-thought out blog entry. He deplores that African fiction does not count more passages on the different waves of slavery that have...
China: Hopes, one day
Journalist-blogger Taras posts a list [zh] today of all the things he hopes yet to do: 1. Be a foreign correspondent in any country; 2. Find the one thing that he likes most to do in this life; 3. Figure out women's hearts; 4. Learn how to play pizzazzy songs...
Jamaica, USA: The making of a poet
Jamaican writer Geoffrey Philp recalls his early days in Miami and his rise from supermarket bag boy to community college student and — eventually — winner of a college poetry prize.
Central Asia: Literary Guide
Registan.net has a survey of literature from and about Central Asia.
Belarus: Marking Three Years Without Vasil Bykau
Andrei Khrapavitski writes about the third anniversary of writer Vasil Bykau's death: “The famous writer was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature, was one of the founders of the Belarusian Popular Front, and is one of the most respected Belarusian authors, a moral authority revered by both seniors and...
Argentina: 30 Days with Borges: Day 30, “El Sur”
Jeff Barry finishes his “30 Days with Borges” series with an informed review of “El Sur,” which happens to also be Barry's URL.
Russia: Books On Muslims In Russia
Sean Guillory examines English-language literature available on the subject of Muslims in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union.
Russia: Mandelstam and Tyutchev Translations
Alex(ei) of The Russian Dilettante's Weblog translates Russian poetry: Osip Mandelstam's Lamarck and Fyodor Tyutchev's Insomnia.
Martinique: Joseph Zobel, Author of Sugar Cane Alley, Dies
Le Blog de [Moi] announces (Fr): “Martiniquan writer Joseph Zobel, author of the novel Rue Cases-Negres [a.k.a Sugar Cane Alley or Black Shack Alley in English] (brought to the big screen by Euzhan Palcy), passed away Saturday (June 17) at the age of 91 (…) in the Gard where he...
Jamaica: Why I read
With characteristic eloquence, Jamaican writer Geoffrey Philp explains why he reads.
Haiti: Banking in 1946
From Haiti, Marcel Salnave of Parlons Peu posts an article written by his father, also Marcel Salnave, in 1946 on the Haitian banking system. Excerpt (Fr): “Banks have become very demanding and ask for each loan a guaranty that surpasses the amount borrowed. Banks in Haiti … have completely suppressed...
Ukraine: Books, Football and Politics
Dan McMinn of Orange Ukraine updates his virtual library of books dealing with Ukraine and writes about two depressing subjects: Ukrainian politics and football.
Lust, Caution
Danny Bloom in Japundit provided some backgrounds on the Ang Lee's latest film “Lust, Caution”. The original story by the late Chinese novelist Eileen Chang (張愛玲) (1920-1995) is only about 10 pages long.
Haiti: 12th Annual “Livres En Folie” Book Fair
Yon Ayisyen is back but not to talk politics: “Livres en Folie, ‘The 12th Annual International Haitian Book Fair’, says (Fr) the blogger, will take place Thursday. You can order their books online before then.”
Jamaica, USA: The US and the post-national writer
As he works on his second novel, Jamaican writer Marlon James ponders the obstacles the US publishing establishment puts in the way of writers like himself, but concludes that “I have to hold to the belief that book and reader have an almost cosmic destiny to meet. And when they...
China: Freethinking young writer takes on the cultural establishment
With the majority of China's artists and intellectuals having been silenced or executed earlier this century, what does that say about that generation's thinkers who are still around today? Han Han (韩寒), perhaps the one post-eighties writer most read by those under thirty, gave birth to a huge controversy earlier...
