And in terms of Absinthe itself, you can order a copy of the new issue (#16) by And to get a taste of it, watch the video below in which Dwayne shamelessly uses his cuter-that-should-be-legal son to help explain what’s included. Watch it for the toddler, stay for the international literature!

• An excerpt from which was translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston and recently published by Archipelago books. (Actually using this in the “Translation & World Literature” class I’m teaching this spring.) Since there’s nothing about issue 14 on the “Absinthe website” quite yet, below is a description of the novel from Archipelago. And click here to hear the Reading the World Podcast episode featuring Bill Johnston.

Myśliwski’s grand epic in the rural tradition—a profound and irreverent stream of memory cutting through the rich and varied terrain of one man’s connection to the land, to his family and community, to women, to tradition, to God, to death, and to what it means to be alive. Wise and impetuous, plain-spoken and compassionate Szymek, recalls his youth in their village, his time as a guerrilla soldier, as a wedding official, barber, policeman, lover, drinker, and caretaker for his invalid brother. Filled with interwoven stories and voices, by turns hilarious and moving, Szymek’s narrative exudes the profound wisdom of one who has suffered, yet who loves life to the very core.

• An excerpt from Agnomia by Robert Gal, translated from the Slovakian by Michaela Freeman and Jim Freeman, and opening interestingly enough:

They select some man, sufficiently experiment with him and only then identify him as the object of the experiment. They slip him hidden meanings of his multisense expressions which, for them, are univocal. They let him deal with it for years. What they tie in a knot through definition in a moment, he is forced to spend years untying through conscientious interpretation. In the meantime, their definitions are petrified solid. His interpretations appear, as if they were made of butter and deliberately throw them on his head, so that they could laugh at these babbles.

• A bit about Mateiu Caragiale’s The Rakes of the Old Court, which was published in 1929 and was recently voted “the Romanian novel of the twentieth century.” This bit from the intro by Paul Cernat makes it sound pretty interesting:

For those who wish to gain a closer knowledge of the peculiarities of the Balkan mindset, a reading of this text, which has the value of an emblem of national identity, is, I might say, obligatory. Of course, we are dealing with a “Balkanism” that has been filtered through the work of Huysmans and Edgar Allen Poe, captured in a hypnotic narrative whose density of meanings has led literary theorist Matei Calinescu to compare it with Borges’ El Aleph. It is an unusual narrative, whose effects are those of an addictive literary drug.

There’s also a piece by Thomas E. Kennedy called “A Visit to Hunger 120 Years Later,” and book reviews of The Other City by Mchal Ajvaz (reviewed by Jeff Waxman) and When a Poet Sees a Chestnut Tree by Jean-Pierre Rosnay (reviewed by John Taylor).

As mentioned above, the Absinthe site for issue 14 is still coming together, but you can

The new issue of the from the folks over at Dalkey Archive is all on “Writing from Postcommunist Romania.” This was edited by Ehren Schimmel and looks pretty interesting. (I would write more, but don’t have a copy, and there’s nothing available online. If I get a copy, I’ll post some sort of update.)

One of my favorite drinks journals is and this “Spotlight on Romania” issue looks particularly good. The guest editor for this issue is Jean Harris—novelist, editor, critic, and translator who used to run The Observer Translation Project and is now working on a new site called the Romanian Literary Exchange.

In addition to pieces from a number of interesting Romanian writers—Mircea Cartarescu, Lucian Dan Teodorovici, Stelian Tanase, Dumitru Tsepeneag, etc.—there’s also an informative opening piece by Carmen Musat on “Contemporary Romanian Literature: A Tale of Continuity and Innovation.” Wish this was available online to link to, but instead, here’s a brief excerpt:

In the early ’90s Romanians hungered for new expressive forms—viscerally. A long-denied craving for the real coincided with a reaction against fiction—all those novels we used to praise for their resistance-packed political references. We ached to salvage the forgotten/forbidden past. Publishing houses brought out titles and promoted authors taboo under the Communist regime. They immersed themselves in autobiographical texts: secret diaries never published before and comprehensive memoirs. True stories, destinies dramatically changed: the most impressive came from well-known politicians and writers of the inter-war period, people who refused to collaborate, who defected or became prisoners of the regime. Many of the titles had documentary value. The new books helped to reconstruct (shine light on or through) the formerly impenetrable atmosphere of terror, the virtual daily prison of communist Romania. And, of greatest significance for contemporary literature, these reconstructive texts functioned as a literary school sui generis for the writers who would publish in the middle ’90s. All in all, literature worked to recover direct discourse and rebuild authenticity.

Definitely worth checking out. And hopefully the Romanian Cultural Institute is sending copies of both of these to dozens of editors at a range of publishing houses. It would be great if these anthologies led to the translation and publication of a few more Romanian novels . . .

Each question is a separate post, so here are links to the four already online, along with a quote from one of the responses. (Just for the record, editors from CALQUE, Absinthe, Words Without Borders, Tameme, One Edit, No Man’s Land, and CipherJournal are being interviewed.)

is about the perceived lack of interest in international literature among English readers.

Brandon Holmquest from CALQUE: I’m not sure if I agree with the idea that readers are disinclined to read things from other countries. There are a hell of a lot of people in this country who are not readers, and a great many who read things like genre fiction. It does the publisher of serious literature, translated or not, no good to consider these people as readers. A record label that puts out hip-hop records cares about hip-hop fans, people who hate music and rock fans can take of themselves.

What would seem to be the essential editorial challenge when working with translations?

Tim Adkins from One Edit: Make it interesting.

Is expression in one language completely transmittable into another language?

Dwayne Hayes from Absinthe: I’m not sure the thoughts in our own heads are completely transmittable in our own language! That said, translation stands on its own as a literary work and is definitely capable of transmitting the heart of the text.

Should the question be more about how much of a culture we try to transmit and how much we intervene, when working with our journals?

Samantha Schnee from Words Without Borders: The mission statement of WWB sums this up nicely: Words Without Borders opens doors to international exchange through translation, publication, and promotion of the world’s best writing. WWB publishes selected prose and poetry on the web and in print anthologies (the next one to focus on the Islamic world), stages special events that connect foreign writers to the general public and media, develops materials for high school teachers to use foreign literature in classrooms, and continues to build an unparalleled online resource center for contemporary global writing.

Not sure if there are more questions to come, but what’s available so far provides an interesting look into these diverse translation journals—all of which are worth checking out in their own right.

There’s a lot of great stuff in here, including Dwayne’s comments about wanting to become the biggest-selling literary magazine in the world, and all the nice references to Open Letter . . . I particularly like this section:

Steve Dolph: Much ballyhoo has been tossed around recently about the notorious 3% statistic for the percentage of books published in translation here in the states. To wit, John O’Brien’s Is this merely a publisher/translator cold war, or are there larger cultural issues at stake in this discussion?

Dwayne Hayes: Well, there’s probably some other dynamic at play in John O’Brien’s essay [Ed. Note: Yeah, I’ll say.] and I can’t comment on that but regardless of the validity of the 3% statistic it does seem to reveal a woeful lack of curiosity about the world among American readers and publishers. And this is backed up by our inability to speak other languages or to even possess a passport. It’s interesting that every year at AWP, without fail, we’ll have a lot of people walk by our table, pick up Absinthe, see that it features European writers, and put it back down as if they’ve picked up a virus. I’ve had people seem offended, “why on earth would you publish a journal of European writers?”

SD: I’ve received identical reactions when selling CALQUE. I say we publish literature in translation and they give me this look like “what for?!” My gut response is to say this reaction is xenophobic, but is that too simplistic?

DH: It’s possible that in those situations the response is xenophobic but I think it again points to some failures in the way we educate. I’ve seen statistics indicating that only 9% of Americans are fluent in a second language and just over 40% of high school students study foreign languages. We’re probably just not that interested in the rest of the world, unfortunately.

It would be wrong to suggest there is some ideal percentage of books that should be translated into English, as if once 10% of the books published in the US are translations then there will be world peace. I don’t know any of these people that O’Brien claims believe “translations, de facto, are good because they are translations” or the “rubbish about translations saving the world.” Obviously, we, along with all the other publishers I know, reject work in translation that is just not good writing. Yet we can cultivate an interest in the world, in the views and opinions of the “other”, and make publishing decisions that take this into consideration without sacrificing the quality of our efforts. But this won’t happen among the large corporate publishers because their focus is on the bottom line. So again, smaller literary enterprises (usually non-profit) like the ones we’re talking about and the small presses like Open Letter, Archipelago, Ugly Duckling, Dalkey Archive, Zephyr, etc. are incredibly important.

And of course, I love this optimistic bit about translators and an interest in international literature:

SD: And yet the practice of literary translation seems, at least to me, very strong. Not a day goes by when I don’t discover a new translator or a group of people publishing interesting work. Is there a connection among these phenomena? Or do you think it not that strong at all?

DH: It does seem strong to me but then again that could just be related to the company I keep. When I started Absinthe some of the other projects like Words without Borders, Circumference, and CALQUE, and publishers like Archipelago and Open Letter were either new or just getting started so there’s been a lot of movement recently and everyone seems to be generally very supportive and encouraging of the work that’s being done. We’re excited to find that after we publish an issue we’ll receive a few emails from other journal publishers who want to get in contact with a writer or translator we’ve featured in order to publish more of their work. So, despite the discouraging statistics and anecdotal evidence, there’s a lot to be optimistic about.

Amen. I highly recommend the whole interview and reading/subscribing to both magazines . . .

The first one available is who won the 2007 Vick Prize for the novel Party Headquarters. In addition to the translation of “Christo and All Those Bad Things,” the article also includes an brief interview with Tenev that primarily focuses on winning the Vick Prize.

How did you feel when you received the prize?

I was nervous and blinking constantly because I’m not used to my new glasses yet. After they handed me the award, everybody stepped back and for three whole minutes – it seemed like much longer to me! – I was alone amidst the photographers. I just stood there counting the flashes and regretting that since the advent of digital cameras nobody bothers limiting their shots. I also realised what celebrity defendants must feel like when surrounded by journalists, while they just sit there helplessly in handcuffs! I was happy, but couldn’t bring myself to grin and wave.

Silvia Choleva does a great job making Party Headquarters sound intriguing:

What do Chernobyl and S & M have in common? Not much, you may think, until you read Georgi Tenev’s Vick Prize-winning novel Partien dom, or Party Headquarters. But combining Communism, sex and nuclear disaster is all in a day’s work for the Sfumato dramatist.

Wilhelm Genazino’s piece on Kafka (“The Unpredictability of Words”) stands out to me, as does Mathilde Walter Clark’s story about a Writer trying to write the Great Danish Novel.

There are a lot of Danish pieces in this issue, which isn’t all that surprising considering that Thomas Kennedy, one of the magazine’s editorial advisors, has been writing about his time in Copenhagen for Absinthe’s recently established

And speaking of new Absinthe activities, they recently put together a festival of European film and writing with Oakland University that took place in Rochester, Michigan. Some of the participants included Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort, Irish poet Eamonn Wall, and translator Bill Martin. Sounds like this will be an annual event, which would be fantastic.

By the way, if you get a copy of this issue, be sure to check out the Open Letter ad in the back—it contains the hidden message “I Do Absinthe,” which I really think should be Absinthe‘s new slogan . . .

Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of content online, but it’s worth a look. (Beware! The content that is online is in what a good friend of ours appropriately calls the ).

Until February 29th, 2008 to Absinthe: New European Writing for two years (or extend your subscription) for only $20* and receive an additional year (two issues) FREE! That’s three years (six issues) for only $20.*

The 2nd issue features pieces by Julia Franck and Clemens Meyer.