Three days before the opening of the Melbourne Writers Festival, UNESCO has named Melbourne as its second City of Literature. Edinburgh became the first in 2004. Arts Minister Lynne Kosky said the decision was confirmation of the value of a lot of people who have been working in the literature industry – writers and publishers and those who support writing and publishing. “It gives confirmation to them not only about the work they’ve done but the quality and also the importance of their work to our city and why they are a critical component of it. Also what it (the […]
International News
Meyer Hit May End Staggered Release Dates in India
The simultaneous release of Stephenie Meyer’s BREAKING DAWN in a number of countries not only bumped up worldwide sales, but might bring release dates in India in line with global standards.The book was published there as a large-format trade paperback on August 14 – a full twelve days after its US release date – and has sold 23,000 copies to date. “We wanted this book early, but it did not happen, because India is not a fully mature market,” said Thomas Abraham, managing director of Hachette in India. A staggered release “ensures that publishers can split the market between formats […]
Kafka's Estate, Possible Pornography in the News
The recent death of Esther Hoffe, secretary to the man who famously defied Franz Kafka’s wish for his papers to be burned, has put the estate in question – and in the news again. As her mother did, reports the NYT, Hava Hoffe is keeping scholars and archivists up at night wondering about the condition of what they believe are letters, diaries, photographs and perhaps unpublished works of Kafka and Brod. “This material belongs in Jerusalem,” argued Mark Gelber, a Kafka scholar and a professor of comparative literature at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba. “Brod became a Zionist before the […]
Tintin Translation Pulled in Spain
A Spanish translation of one of Tintin’s most famous tales, The Blue Lotus, by Antonio Altarriba has been withdrawn from bookshops after pressure from Hergé’s estate. Arriba had updated the comic to show Tintin in his 30s and having something of a midlife crisis, with plenty of graphic sex scenes. The estate claimed the Altarriba version of this particular tale, which was published to cash in on last year’s 100th anniversary of Remi’s birth, “perverted the essence of the personality” of Tintin, putting pressure on the publishers of The Pink Lotus, Edicions de Ponent, and its distributors to ensure it […]
Vietnam Has Translation Woes, Too
The dearth of translated works is not just an American problem. Thanh Nien News profiles 28-year-old Cao Viet Dung, a “prolific” translator of works by Milan Kundera, Thomas Friedman, Michel Houellebecq, and Paul Auster. He bemoans Vietnam’s “chaotic reading culture in which people rush to read worthless books while ignoring worthwhile ones.” Dung is also critical of the 50-plus state-owned publishers in Vietnam, as published novels “lack high-quality content and have been sloppily edited” and censorship has led to many books being withdrawn from circulation after publication.Thanh Nien News
"Lost" Sir Walter Scott Works to Be Published
Even though Sir Walter Scott’s final two novels, The Siege Of Malta and the incomplete Bizarro, were kept under wraps by his family for fear of sullying his literary reputation (the author had suffered three strokes by then), University of Edinburgh Press has published them, corrected and in a single volume, leading to accusations of “grave robbing.” Paul Scott, who published a book based on Scott’s journals, was surprised to learn their wishes had been overturned, said: “Scott’s health deteriorated quite markedly and you can see that from his journal. It starts off as a very intelligent, very well written […]