Certain disasters dwell in the public consciousness long after they take place. The sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912 took the lives of 1,500 people. In the 110 years since the sinking, numerous books and films, along with a voluminous amount of scholarship have ensured that the memory of the event lives … Read More
“Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us” is the theme of Banned Books Week 2022, observed from September 18 to 24 this year. Committed to intellectual freedom, Books We Read joins the American Library Association’s annual event, which has brought together the entire book community to support the freedom “to seek and to express ideas, even … Read More
Editor’s note: celebrating the freedom to read with The Library Book on Banned Books Week 2022. Held September 18 – 24, this year’s theme is “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.” Read more about the initiative from the American Library Association, including the most frequently challended books of 2021. We at Books We Read are … Read More
I am a science fiction fan. So much so, that my love of the genre is one of my go-to “fun facts” whenever I introduce myself. I have short stories to thank for that. When I was in high school, I had my first deep-dive into the world of science fiction, via the works of … Read More
Speaking of his poetry in an interview in 2005, Borbély claims that he doesn’t intend to discuss deep philosophical questions in his works. Instead, he works on solving the task of creating a system of rules that builds on his previous works, but breaks away from them or obliterates them. Admitting that he doesn’t think … Read More
In addition to Borbély’s poems sporadically published in English in online journals, full volumes written by him have also been masterfully translated, starting with Berlin-Hamlet (Borbély, 2008): a book of poetry, which is, to some extent, considered as a predecessor to Kafka’s Son. Commemorating his own visits to Berlin, Borbély follows in the footsteps of … Read More
Circling back to Kafka shows the long-lasting effect of early experiences and influences continually revisited that is discernible in Borbély’s works. One step forward from the practice of “the novel writing itself,” Kafka’s Son seems to follow another modus operandi, that of the text itself rewriting itself. Borbély turns to Kafka’s texts three times by … Read More
Connecting a book with its audiences in another language often means bridging two separate, culturally different worlds. The intricacies of the source and target languages always make the translator’s work even more difficult. One of the most famous authors preoccupied (to put it mildly) with translation was Milan Kundera, a writer who kept rewriting his … Read More
When in 2013 Borbély’s first novel The Dispossesed was published in Hungarian, the buzz quickly picked up and demand grew for an English translation. A literary sensation somewhere between memoir and fiction, the book posed an incredible challenge for the reader to digest, let alone the translator to interpret and present the text in a … Read More
The issue of climate change has unfortunately become an integral part of our daily lives. It is impossible to get through a day without seeing something climate-related in the news, on the internet, via social media, etc. Whether it’s the latest science report on world’s escalating temperature, rising sea levels, or rough weather such as … Read More