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Found in Translation: Simon Willis welcomes Peter Stamm's clinical account of a disturbing passion...  read more »

Six Good Books: Maggie Fergusson's choices include golden essays with a northern compass and a Holocaust novel with humour...  read more »

Notes on a Voice: Victoria Beale pins down David Foster Wallace's sprawling talent...    read more »

Found in Translation: Simon Willis picks Etgar Keret's "Suddenly, a Knock on the Door", a surreal and subtle collection of stories by Israel's most unusual writer ...   read more »

"The Hare with Amber Eyes" has become an international phenomenon. Fiammetta Rocco follows the author to Vienna and finds the saga continuing ...   read more »

~ Posted by Emma Hogan, January 31st 2012
 
As Claire Tomalin's new biography points out, Charles Dickens loved birthdays. Next Tuesday, he has a significant one of his own. To mark his bicentenary, there's a service at Westminster Abbey (where a wreath will be laid). There's also a new £2 coin from the Royal Mint (with his profile made up from his book titles), along with exhibitions in the British Library, the Museum of London and the Morgan Library in New York.
 
Online, Penguin Classics is running a poll to see which of his characters is the most loved. The list of the 40 names you can vote for leans heavily towards the best known ones from the movies, with five from "Great Expectations" and four from "Oliver Twist". There's another four from "David Copperfield" (but not David himself) and two from "A Christmas Carol". The Artful Dodger, Fagin, Miss Havisham, Uriah Heep, Mr Micawber, Madame Defarge and Lady Dedlock—they're all here. But, surprisingly, not the "timid, broken-spirited" Smike from "Nicholas Nickleby" or the dangerously attractive Steerforth from "David Copperfield".   read more »

Robert Walser's "Berlin Stories", translated into English for the first time, have humble subjects and fabulous images, writes Simon Willis ...  read more »

In the ninth in our series Notes on a Voice, Robert Butler takes on the world's most famous dramatist ...  read more »

~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 5th 2012
 
A football match kicks off, the New Year celebrations kick off, a new TV series kicks off. That's simple enough. Then the poet Robert Lowell used the phrase in its darker American sense: "The old bitches / live into their hundreds, while I'll kick off/ tomorrow."  read more »

~ Posted by Robert Butler, January 3rd 2012

The British edition of the giveaway newspaper Metro has a two-page spread today about new books to look forward to in 2012. "Top tomes to indulge in ..."  shows how deeply the snowclone permeates publishing. Coined eight years ago, "snowclone" refers to a phrase that serves as a template for endless variations (as in yesterday's brainy is the new sexy).
 
Bloomsbury are publishing William Boyd's "Waiting for Sunrise" in February (which plays off "Waiting for Godot") and Rajesh Parameswaran's "I Am An Executioner" in May (which plays off everything from Soseki Natsume's "I Am A Cat" to Doug Hofstadter's "I am a Strange Loop"). Hamish Hamilton publish Alain de Botton's "Religion for Atheists" this month (which is not unlike "Philosophy for Dummies").

The one that crosses the line is Nathan Englander's "What We Talk About When We Talk about Anne Frank", which Weidenfeld & Nicolson publish next month. It plays off Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" (1981). But that has already been played off by Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" (2008). It's what we talk about when we talk about snowclones.
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