Bill Marx
Norman Manea wants a nuanced moral reckoning of the sins committed in the Stalinist past. by Bill Marx In a recent World Books podcast I talk to Romanian-born essayist and novelist Norman Manea about his article, “A Lasting Poison,” which was published last month in the “New Republic.” In his commentary, Manea explores the recent…
Read Moreby Bill Marx Brain Snuggles with Violin at The World’s Studio In my latest World Books podcast, which includes video coverage, I examine evolving international views of the relationship between neuroscience and the arts, with a special emphasis on the healing powers of music for those suffering from neurodegenerative diseases. The Longwood Symphony Orchestra recently…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Novelist Ha Jin — “Only through history can history be conquered.” On my latest World Books podcast I talk to writer Ha Jin, who in 1985 left China to attend Brandeis University. Since then he has written five novels, including “Waiting” which won the National Book Award and “War Trash,” the recipient…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx First, I want to mention a couple of volumes that I unaccountably left off my World Books 2008 round-up of the best fiction and non-fiction candidates. No, it is not another salute to the current international fiction daring Roberto Bolaño, a fever fanned by the appearance of his huge tome “2666” in…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx On this week’s podcast I talk to Peter Filkins, an award-winning translator who walked into a Harvard Square bookstore, picked up an obscure novel written in German and, after reading a few pages, recognized that he had stumbled onto literary gold. Written in 1950, published in 1962, the book was one of…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Translator and poet David Hinton in the midst of nature. On this week’s World Books podcast I talk to David Hinton, an award-winning translator of classical Chinese poetry and philosophy. His latest book, which Hinton translated and edited, is “Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology” from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. The wonderfully rich…
Read Moreby Bill Marx “Writing in the Dark” By David Grossman. Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen Farrar, Straus Giroux, 131 pages, $18 Israeli novelist David Grossman fears his country is losing its soul. In this stirring but slim collection essays on the intersection of politics and literature by celebrated Israeli novelist David (“See Under:…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Translator Ellen Elias-Bursac On this week’s World Books podcast I talk to Ellen Elias-Bursac, who translates the work of two of my favorite writers from the former Yugoslavia: David Albahari and Dubravka Ugresic. Elias-Bursac is currently living in the Netherlands, but she recently visited Boston, so I got a chance to talk…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Earlier this month, Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, stoked up the cultural consternation machine when he implied that American writers are too provincial to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. American literary life is “too isolated, too insular” he opines, its writers don’t translate particularly well and they aren’t…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Novelist and critic Dubravka Ugresic On this week’s World Books podcast I talk to novelist and cultural critic Dubravka Ugresic about her latest volume of trenchant essays and commentaries, “Nobody’s Home” (Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac). My conversation with Ugresic circles around her contention that, despite European enthusiasm for culture,…
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