In light of recent political events, we’d like to make it abundantly clear that Malvern Books is a safe space. A space where those who feel threatened may find refuge in literature and community. Misogyny, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and cruelty of all kinds will not be tolerated. Hate is not welcome here.
Malvern staff member Fernando is a New York Review Books Classics enthusiast, and he has a splendid recommendation for y’all…
The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
Sometimes the dirty politics of your time catch up to your immediate reality. Just ask Russian anarchist writer Victor Serge (1890 – 1947). He lived in Paris as a young man, then in 1919 traveled Russia supporting the Bolshevik revolution. In 1933, after a few imprisonments, he was deported and settled in France, where he began his career as a novelist. This is his last novel, which stirs together the themes Serge explored his entire life, revolving around the Soviet Great Terror of the early 20th Century. Perfect for fans of political thrillers. In the same vein, check out Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning, also available through NYRB Classics.
Malvern staff member Fernando is a New York Review Books Classics enthusiast, and he has an excellent recommendation for y’all…
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
There’s something like a quiet magic in the art of the “meaning of life” western, as opposed to a violent, shoot-em-up kind of western. This book is perhaps the kind of western Herman Melville would have written—it retains elements of realism yet elevates moments into the realm of the epic:
But whatever he spoke he knew would be but another name for the wildness that he sought. It was a freedom and a goodness, a hope and a vigor that he perceived to underlie all the familiar things of his life, which were not free or good or hopeful or vigorous. What he sought was the source and preserver of his world, a world which seemed to turn ever in fear away from its source, rather than search it out, as the prairie grass around him sent down its fibered roots into the rich dark dampness, the Wildness, and thereby renewed itself, year after year.
To aficionados of the genre, this book is considered the greatest western written in the late twentieth century, along with Warlock by Oakley Hall. They make a good pair, really—Hall’s Warlock is the shoot-em-up kind of western, and can also be found in the NYRB Classics catalog. They’re both must-haves for fans of the western genre.
Tomorrow is International Translation Day! According to Three Percent, a brilliant resource for international literature, less than 1% of all books published each year in the United States are literary fiction and poetry in translation. This seems a great shame—we’re missing out on a wealth of wonderful reading and, as Three Percent points out, we’re also neglecting the opportunity to learn about other cultures:
Reading literature from other countries is vital to maintaining a vibrant book culture and to increasing the exchange of ideas among cultures. In this age of globalization, one of the best ways to preserve the uniqueness of cultures is through the translation and appreciation of international literary works.
If you’re keen to discover more contemporary international literature and learn about the wonderful work of literary translators, we’ve got a treat in store (and in the store) for you—we’re celebrating International Translation Day with a special event and a very special offer:
If you think you might have trouble deciding what to choose from our fantastic selection, let us spotlight a few recent releases—originally written in languages as diverse as Slovenian, Hindi, Italian, Norwegian, and Japanese—to whet your appetite for a global literary adventure!
Hippodrome by Miklavž Komelj; translated by Boris Gregoric and Dan Rosenberg (Zephyr Press)In Hippodrome, his first collection of poems in English translation, Slovenian poet Komelj references Futurist operas, NATO military action, personal friends, and literary and artistic heroes. His view is wide and deep, but throughout this book, and despite all these shifts in attention and approach, he builds a compelling and unique vision.
This Number Does Not Exist by Mangalesh Dabral (BOA Editions)An attentive critique on contemporary reality, this first US publication of Mangalesh Dabral, presented in bilingual English and Hindi, speaks for the dislocated, disillusioned people of our time. These compassionate poems depict the reality of diaspora among ordinary people and the middle class, underlining the disillusionments of post-Independence India.
The Temple of Iconoclasts by J. Rodolfo Wilcock; translated by Lawrence Venuti (David R. Godine)Wilcock’s charming fiction in the form of a biographical dictionary features a cast of eccentrics, visionaries, and downright crackpots. Temple’s brief portraits blend mordant satire and profound imaginative sympathy, taking in the whole dazzling spectrum of human folly—including a handful of colors that only Wilcock’s Swiftian eye could possibly have perceived.
Don’t Leave Me by Stig Saeterbakken; translated by Sean Kinsella (Dalkey Archive Press)When seventeen-year-old Aksel Morander encounters Amalie, it proves a turning point in his life—not only does he fall in love for the first time, but he is introduced to an unfamiliar world that reveals everything around him in a new light. This is an intense novel about loneliness and agonizing passion, by one of Norway’s most acclaimed contemporary writers.
Collected Haiku of Yosa Buson; translated by W. S. Merwin and Takako Lento (Copper Canyon Press)This is the first complete bilingual translation of the entire Buson Kushu, a comprehensive collection of the haiku of Yosa Buson (1716–83), originally published in Japan in the mid-eighteenth century. W.S. Merwin and Takako Lento worked for nearly a decade to co-translate these poems, filled with resonant philosophical inquiry and wisdom about the natural world.
Here’s a handy roundup of some of the new Spring titles adorning our shelves, featuring two works in translation from Wakefield Press, a brand-new installment for all you Struggle fans, and an audacious reinvention of a classic tale.
“The Pig is the Sun….” So begins Oskar Panizza’s outrageously heretical and massively erudite essay on the pig, originally published in 1900 in his journal Zurich Discussions. Moving from the Rig Veda to the Edda to Ovid, from the story of Tristan and Isolde to Nordic celebrations of Christmas, from Grimms’ fairytales to Swedish folklore to Judeo-Egyptian dietary restrictions, the author contends, through painstakingly philological argumentation, that the miraculous swine occupies a central, celestial position as the life-giving force animating the entire universe, usurping the place of God as the beginning and end of all things.
This fierce fable of childbirth by German Surrealist Unica Zürn was written after she had already given birth to two children and undergone the self-induced abortion of another in Berlin in the 1950s. Beginning in the relatively straightforward, if disturbing, narrative of a young woman in a tower (with a bat in her hair and ravens for company) engaged in a psychic war with the parasitic son in her belly, The Trumpets of Jericho dissolves into a beautiful nightmare of hypnotic obsession and mythical language, stitched together with anagrams and private ruminations. Arguably Zürn’s most extreme experiment in prose, and never before translated into English, this novella dramatizes the frontiers of the body–its defensive walls as well as its cavities and thresholds–animating a harrowing and painfully honest depiction of motherhood as a breakdown in the distinction between self and other, transposed into the language of darkest fairy tales.
The much-anticipated fifth book of Knausgaard’s powerful My Struggle series is written with tremendous force and sincerity. As a nineteen-year-old, Karl Ove moves to Bergen and invests all of himself in his writing. But his efforts get the opposite effect—he wants it so much that he gets writer’s block. We raved about the first book in this series, and can’t wait to read this penultimate volume.
For the latest in the Four Corners Familiars series, artist Fiona Banner recasts Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness as a luxury magazine with new photographs by Magnum photographer Paolo Pellegrin. First published in 1899, Heart of Darkness is a story of trade and corruption that proceeds from a boat moored on the banks of the Thames into the heart of the Congo. For her new edition, Banner commissioned Pellegrin, a conflict photographer who has worked extensively in the Congo, to photograph London’s financial center, its streets and trading floors, its costumes and strip clubs―the City of London as seen by a veteran war photographer. The collaboration between Banner and Pellegrin emerged from an initial invitation from Peer, London, to work with the collection of the Archive of Modern Conflict; a selection of Pellegrin’s images are now part of the Archive, filed under “Heart of Darkness, 2014.”
You might already be familiar with some of Malvern’s regular reading series, like Novel Night (it’s tomorrow!), I Scream Social, and our Malvern Books’ Club: Reading Classics from New York Review Books (there’s still time to join us for April). Well, we’ve another sensational series to add to the mix: Fantastical Fictions!
Fantastical Fictions is an odd-monthly event focusing on the literary fantastic across genres and cultures. Hosted by Rebecca Schwarz and Chris Brown, the series features published writers reading from new works, as well as an open mic for works in progress. Q&A sessions and discussions based on the fantastic literature available on our shelves round out a fun evening that’s sure to appeal to anyone who fancies some fanciful fiction. If you’d like to sign up for the FF mailing list, please do email us. We send out occasional newsletters to let you know about upcoming events and new works of fantastic literature in the store.
Our next Fantastical Fictions event will be on Thursday, May 5th. In the meantime, why not catch up on some footage from past Fantastical evenings? The videos from our first event, featuring legendary Austin-based science fiction writer Howard Waldrop, are shown below, and we also have a YouTube playlist that’s well worth a watch.