On the night of November 9, 1989, after months of unrest in Europe and East Germany, the checkpoints between East and West Berlin were suddenly, almost accidentally, opened, reuniting the two sides of the divided city, and bringing together a divided Europe and two worlds that had been apart for nearly thirty years. However, the fall of the Berlin Wall was just one of many signs of change that came with 1989; before long a spate of revolutions, the "Autumn of Nations," had spread across Europe and by December, it appeared that the Cold War was over. To mark the twentieth anniversary of this momentous collapse, and to shed some light on how it came to pass, Words without Borders presents The Wall in My Head, an exciting anthology that features fiction, essays, images, and original documents to pick up where most popular accounts of the Cold War end, and trace the path of the revolutionary spirit of 1989 from its origins to the present day. The Wall in My Head combines work from the generation of writers and artists who witnessed the fall of the Iron Curtain firsthand with the impressions and reflections of those who grew up in its wake and whose work, childhoods, and memories are all colored by the long shadow that it cast. The Wall in My Head provides a unique view into the change, optimism, and confusion that came with 1989 and examines how each of these has weathered the twenty years since that fateful year. Highlights within include seminal excerpts from the work of Milan Kundera, Peter Schneider, Ryszard Kapu ci ski, Vladimir Sorokin and Victor Pelevin and new work from P
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Words without Borders is a nonprofit organization with an online magazine featuring works in translation from around the world. Each month it publishes a new "themed" issue that focuses either on a place or topic, and highlights some of the most interesting contemporary writing. The editors of Words without Borders have been involved in the publication of two other international anthologies: Literature from the "Axis of Evil" (New Press, 2006) and Words without Borders: The World through the Eyes of Writers (Anchor Books, 2007). More information is available at wordswithoutborders.org.
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By las cosas
This is an anthology of 31 short pieces and a section of 10 photos. Small photos are also interspersed throughout the pieces, often either randomly, having little if anything to do with the piece, or connected to something addressed in a piece, but adding little to the written piece. For example, several photos of typed pages in a language other than English. This is a book of English translations, so what is the point of these photos?
Of the pieces themselves, many are excerpts from novels, and the four to eight page excerpts are too fragmentary and often insufficiently tied to the central concept of the book to be of much interest. I found the essays and autobiographical pieces more interesting, particularly those by Masha Gessen, Vladimir Sorokin, Peter Esterhazy and the always wonderfully grumpy Dubravka Ugresic. Uniformly excellent translations, or to be more honest, I should only say that none read as though they were translated from another language.
My main frustration is that there is no cohesion between any of the materials in the book, and while Keith Gessen makes a half-hearted attempt to weave the material into a cohesive whole in his introduction, it isn't convincing. Instead the reader merely hears thirty-one voices saying thirty-one different things about the Soviet Union before during and after 1989. Too big a subject, not much new being said.
Of the pieces themselves, many are excerpts from novels, and the four to eight page excerpts are too fragmentary and often insufficiently tied to the central concept of the book to be of much interest. I found the essays and autobiographical pieces more interesting, particularly those by Masha Gessen, Vladimir Sorokin, Peter Esterhazy and the always wonderfully grumpy Dubravka Ugresic. Uniformly excellent translations, or to be more honest, I should only say that none read as though they were translated from another language.
My main frustration is that there is no cohesion between any of the materials in the book, and while Keith Gessen makes a half-hearted attempt to weave the material into a cohesive whole in his introduction, it isn't convincing. Instead the reader merely hears thirty-one voices saying thirty-one different things about the Soviet Union before during and after 1989. Too big a subject, not much new being said.
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Ok, this is not a book review but a discussion of the milieu of the writer of the Intro, such a I knew it.
Keith Gessen is a member of the increasingly well-reviewed literary journal N+1, so I do want to read this. He felt that his great novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men, was upstaged by Sloan Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake, also a good book in a much different way, which caught more heat, critically, than Gessen's did, for lacking ethnic and economic diversity. The critics are extremely tough on new novels,, e.g., Indecision: A Novel, also of the N+1 crowd, and I dare say the writing world still discriminates more towards women.
Anyway, I love what WordsWithoutBorders.org is doing, translating foreign literature from behind various curtains in many parts of the world! Will update if and when I do read this. But all their other books have been good so far:
For example, Literature from the "Axis of Evil": Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations: A Words Without Borders Anthology [LITERATURE FROM AXIS OF EVIL]
For undergrads, N+1 released a special pamphlet: P.S.1 Symposium: A Practical Avant-Garde (Research Branch Pamphlet Series), which is simultaneously hilarious and a must-read, as a guide to studying literature in your H.S./college years.
Keith Gessen is a member of the increasingly well-reviewed literary journal N+1, so I do want to read this. He felt that his great novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men, was upstaged by Sloan Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake, also a good book in a much different way, which caught more heat, critically, than Gessen's did, for lacking ethnic and economic diversity. The critics are extremely tough on new novels,, e.g., Indecision: A Novel, also of the N+1 crowd, and I dare say the writing world still discriminates more towards women.
Anyway, I love what WordsWithoutBorders.org is doing, translating foreign literature from behind various curtains in many parts of the world! Will update if and when I do read this. But all their other books have been good so far:
For example, Literature from the "Axis of Evil": Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations: A Words Without Borders Anthology [LITERATURE FROM AXIS OF EVIL]
For undergrads, N+1 released a special pamphlet: P.S.1 Symposium: A Practical Avant-Garde (Research Branch Pamphlet Series), which is simultaneously hilarious and a must-read, as a guide to studying literature in your H.S./college years.
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