It’s been my pleasure to be involved with a number of podcasts focusing on reading and/or translation in recent months in various capacities – as a guest, interviewer and producer. As such, I thought I’d give a roundup of some of my favourites, not least because I suspect people who like this blog would enjoy…
As the heatwaves rippled across Europe, one summer novel held me gripped. It comes from Foundry Editions, an indie publisher set up in 2023 to champion literature from around the Mediterranean and notable, like fellow leading internationalist houses Fitzcarraldo and And Other Stories, for their distinctive covers (in this case designed to capture the visual…
This Women in Translation month, I’m featuring a collection of short stories by the Lebanese writer and critic Lana Abdelrahman. I had the pleasure of meeting and sharing a stage with Abdelrahman at the Dibrugarh University International Literature Festival in Assam, India, earlier this year. When we said goodbye, she generously pressed a copy of…
Just a week after I returned from the Dibrugarh University International Literature Festival in Assam, India, I jetted off again, this time to take part in the 25th annual Hong Kong International Literary Festival. My engagements there began with an intense schedule of school visits. Jetlag notwithstanding, I was picked up at 7.15am on my…
This book came onto my radar during the brilliant event about writing female experience I attended at Hong Kong International Literary Festival earlier this month. The panel featured three local authors, who spoke arrestingly about how they capture the pressures facing young women in Hong Kong today. As soon as I heard the premise of…
‘I wonder if you’ve considered any books from Tibet so far,’ Chris Peacock wrote in a comment on this blog a few weeks back. ‘In recent years, there have been an increasing number of translations from so-called “minority” peoples and languages in China such as Uyghur, Mongolian, and Tibetan. Still a small number, relatively speaking,…
Eight months after the launch of the paperback of Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not-knowing, the ebook edition has hit the virtual shelves. It’s been lovely and humbling to see responses to the book so far. Prospect magazine called it ‘a genius move… In 12 short chapters it rips up the rules about reading and…
Last month I had the honour of introducing the Indie Press Network’s spring showcases, two virtual events presenting some of the key titles coming out from small presses in the UK and Ireland in the next few months. As indie presses have long been the heartland of translated literature, I was only too pleased to…
This week’s bestselling books roundup has three titles appearing here for the first time. Unsurprisingly, one is Big Little Truths by Liane Moriarty, the sequel to Big Little Lies, set ten years after the events of the first book. We also have the newest from a bestselling Australian thriller author, Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth.…
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