I’m introducing May 2020’s Riveting Reviews with an appeal:
The European Literature Network needs your help. And by that I mean dosh. Wonga. Readies. Fric. Grana. Knete. Do you see what I’m saying…?
Our coffers are now empty, and the work we have been doing for the last ten years to promote European writing in the UK can only continue if we have the funds to do it. That means our events (live and now online), our Riveting interviews and podcasts, the news and newsletters, the blogs and translation extracts, and of course our #RivetingReviews.
Five years ago we started offering you our monthly reviews of European literature in translation. These have grown in stature, and are now a staple for UK publishers and readers of translated literature. With the review pages in newspapers fading away to almost nothing, readers looking for intelligent, lively, informed opinion on European writing come to us.
But they can only continue to do so with your help. So please donate to keep the European Literature Network alive.
Here’s how to do it:
You can transfer money via our ELNet PayPal account (linked to contact@eurolitnetwork.com). OR you can pay with your credit card via PayPal (you don’t need a PayPal account). You can use the link on the home page. It’s safe and secure!
If you donate we will send you a gift: our free one-stop practical home-filming and recording guide, The Home Office: Home Filming, created by professional broadcaster and videographer Rosie Goldsmith, and by Mihai from London Video Stories. (Click here for more information).
May’s #RivetingReviews demonstrate just what you’ll miss if we can’t continue! This month we go to Norway with Ewa Sherman to read Knausgaard protégé Kenneth Moe’s debut, and with Johanne Elster Hanson to discover the flipside of the country’s recently gained wealth.
We go to Sweden with Barry Forshaw for two of his ‘Classic’ Riveting Reviews, in which he looks back at seminal works of European crime fiction: this time by Åsa Larsson and Camilla Läckberg.
We’re in Germany too: Lizzy Siddal reviews the monumental graphic novel, Berlin, while Paul Burke returns with his take on Maike Wetzel’s haunting Elly. We hop over to Austria with Alyson Coombes to read a touching novella by Paulus Hochgatterer, and then we’re down to Spain, where David Hebblethwaite enjoys Sara Mesa’s disturbing Four by Four, and I take on a lost classic of Catalan literature by my new favourite author, Mercè Rodoreda.
Enjoy this selection of reviews, and if you want them continue, please contribute what you can.
We’re taking a break in June, but in mid-July we’re back with a special French set of reviews, to celebrate ELNet’s French Book Week, which takes place from the 13th to the 17th of July, leading up to the BCLT’s French translation summer school.
And at the risk of repeating myself: pasta, poen, dziengi, pengar, peníze…
By West Camel