Cuba may be lacking a biathlon team, but they could take home literary gold in the 2010 Best Translated Book Award!
Today’s news should give you lots of ideas for weekend reading, from the best translated books of 2009 to a spotlight on unreliable narrators. And if pictures are more your thing, we have some exciting news involving James Patterson and comic books… enjoy!
- The Olympics aren’t the only international competition going on! Earlier this week, Three Percent, the University of Rochester’s international literature blog, announced the ten finalists for its 2010 Best Translated Book Award. According to the blog, “these ten books separated themselves from the rest of the pack for their overall quality, including the greatness of the original book and its translation.” Winners will be announced in March. In the meantime, Jacket Copy discusses the finalists.
- In one of its fun, random top ten lists, the Guardian publishes a roundup of top ten unreliable narrators by author Henry Sutton. In addition to naming ten books (yes, Lolita made the list), Sutton discusses the expanding role of the unreliable narrator in postmodern literature. Compared to today’s books, he says, The Catcher in the Rye is “almost tamely reliable.” Just don’t tell Holden Caulfield he said that…
- Because 9,826 bestselling titles isn’t enough, James Patterson is teaming up with IDW Publishing to create a comic book series debuting in May. The first five-part series will be based on his young-adult novel Witch & Wizard, but the comic version will be called Shadowland (not to be confused with Alyson Noel’s vampire book of the same name). USA Today has more details about the arrangement and what readers can expect.
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