Stories about Literature from October, 2009
Albania: Robert Elsie's “Albanian Dialects”
Albanian Blogger recommends scholar Robert Elsie's work to those interested in the Albanian language and literature.
Bangladesh: Sidewalk Bookseller World And Best Sellers
Ulysses at Back To Bangladesh wonders how the sidewalk booksellers in Dhaka streets, who sell cheap bootleg bestsellers during traffic jam, pick up which books to sell. The blogger asks: “do people buy these books because there is nothing else affordable? Or do they really read these books?”
St. Lucia: Death of the Artiste?
“In the Caribbean you’re more likely to wake up one day in summer and find it snowing than find a writer or poet who believes that the way to get ahead in the book trade and the literary field is to look to the governments for support”: St. Lucia-based Caribbean...
Caribbean: Rethinking Online Publishing
Caribbean bloggers imagine an online writing and publishing community using participatory media to overcome the difficulties of book publishing in the region.
Africa: Predators of Art, Entrepreneurship and Poet Ramblings
There are predators and there are art predators and Gwendolyn Alley is one such predator. It is not often that you hear that one is an art predator, an enthusiast or aficionado maybe but not predator and this is what made me become very curious about Alley’s blog where she confesses her love for art.
Russia: Kindle
Profy reports on Amazon Kindle's “international expansion”: “This decision is obviously good at least because I personally don’t like any limitations and opening yet another window to the huge Russian market is hopefully a wise decision for Amazon. […] At the same time I myself suspect that the vast majority...
UK: Russian Film Festival
Siberian Light writes about the 3rd Russian Film Festival, which begins on Oct. 30 in London.
Jamaica: Publishing in the Internet Age
Jamaican litblogger Geoffrey Philp gets thinking “about publishing, the Internet, and Caribbean writers.”
Egypt: Campaign Against Abusive Publishers
An Egyptian blogger and author has had it with dealing with unscrupulous publishers and is taking the initiative to make the voices of authors not given a chance a a sounding board. Check out what Marwa Rakha is up to and how successful her initiative is.
Ukraine: Art Website Shut Down; Gallery Set on Fire
IZO reports that “Anatoli Ulyanov's Ukrainian art website Proza (http://proza.com.ua) has been shut down by its US host for displaying ‘child pornography'” – and that “Pavel Gudimov's Ya Gallery in Kiev has been set fire to after the presentation and discussion there of a gay literary anthology.”
Trinidad & Tobago: What Town Say…
A new literary magazine, based in Trinidad and Tobago, also has its own blog, here.
Japan: Tokyo Vice
Japansubculture publishes an interview [en] with Jake Adelstein, author of the book “Tokyo Vice: an American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan” and former crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.
China: What Lies between Chinese Writers and the Nobel Prize?
Fools Mountain tried to explain why there isn't any mainland Chinese writers getting the Nobel Prize yet.
Bermuda: Reflections
Rumours of a snap election being called in Bermuda remind 21 Square of an Aesop’s fable.
