Wind blowing on more than the Earth alone. Wind not a living cell, but yet so much life comes with each and every breath it breaths unto us like God himself. We give life from the life that was given

As News.Az reports, . They also have an interview with the founder of the award, Nigar Kocharli -- with a headline that offers a hard-to-top understatement: . Of course, she doesn't help matters by not mentioning a single Azeri author

A new issue of is now available online, with a focus on 'New Prose Fiction from Turkey'. Well worth a look.

was reviewed at the complete review, when they were still writing as 'Luther Blissett'; since then -- now writing as 'Wu Ming' -- they've come out (in translation) with 54 (get your copy at ) and now Manituana (see the

As 's new book, The Battle of the Sun comes out (in the UK; get your copy at ), the profiles proliferate. The latest are: in The Independent (and Jones also in the Sunday Times) in The Telegraph

What a surprise: the Wall Street Journal (well, Juan Williams, writing there) finds there's: . This is apparently: "the fastest-growing segment of African-American letters, a genre called "ghetto lit" or "gangster lit.""(This claim seems anecdotal rather than factual; I'd love

No word yet at the official site, but it is being widely reported that Lawless and Other Stories by Sefi Atta has won the ; see, for example, the Next report by Akintayo Abodunrin, . See also her .

In The Times Ben Macintyre worries that , as:The internet is there for snacking, grazing and tasting, not for the full, six-course feast that is nourishing narrative. The consequence is an anorexic form of culture. He concludes:Narrative is not dead,

In the TLS Paul Reitter writes about in a review of The Whole Difference: Selected writings of Hugo von Hofmannsthal (see the Princeton University Press , or get your copy from or ). He notes that:Even Karl Kraus, who loathed

The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Alaa Al Aswany's collection of stories, , just out in the US (as a paperback original).

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) has passed away, leading to widespread coverage, from The Independent's leader, , to any number of solid obituaries -- see, for example, among the early ones: in The Los Angeles Times in the Wall Street Journal in

Author Francisco Ayala has passed away; see, for example, the in the Latin American Herald Tribune. Despite a longtime American connection, very little of his work seems to be available in English.

It's not the most prestigious of the French literary prizes being handed out these days (see my ), but at least it comes with a much bigger pile of cash than the Goncourt -- 30,000 euros: as, for example, Christine

The American University in Cairo Press admirably keeps churning bringing out translations of previously unavailable novels by Naguib Mahfouz, and the most recent addition to the complete review is my review of his -- further evidence of the Egyptian Nobel

The for the is now available: 156 authors from 46 countries, with 41 books originally written in 17 languages other than English (a decent percentage). Among the finalists are a good number (eighteen) under review at the complete review: by

The major French literary prizes have been handed out, with Trois Femmes puissantes (by Marie Ndiaye; get your copy at ) taking the prix Goncourt, and Un roman français (by Frédéric Beigbeder; get your copy at ) taking the prix

of online periodicals available now are -- on: Twenty Years After: Germany Now and Then -- and .

A while ago Horacio Castellanos Moya wrote on the American Bolañomania phenomenon for La Nacion, , and now Guernica prints a translation of the piece, . (See also Scott Esposito's earlier mention of .) In the main, it is actually

The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Boualem Sansal's (which will be published in the UK as An Unfinished Business ...). Amazingly, it's the first of Sansal's books to be translated into English -- and,

Shakira's looking sexy dancing in bed in "Did It Again".