In this episode we look at what NYRB Classics will be releasing in the first part of 2014 (and a bit beyond).
While we do discuss all fourteen of the titles, the fun part of the episode is when Brian and I step back and list our top five most anticipated releases from this group. There’s some great stuff coming, of course, so this was a bit difficult. Please let us know what you’re most looking forward to.
- Intro
- Brief discussion of each book (the individual times are below): 00:03:27
- Brian courageously offers the “least anticipated”: 00:31:45
- Our top five anticipated titles: 00:37:50
Here are the fourteen books we talk about:
- (00:03:27): The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos, by Patrick Leigh Fermor — March 4, 2014
- (00:04:27): On Being Blue, by William H. Gass — March 18, 2014
- (00:06:09): The Use of Man, by Aleksandar Tišma — April 29, 2014
- (00:08:08): Shakespeare’s Montaigne — April 8, 2014 (Brian and I both muddled this one. It’s the translation of Montaigne that Shakespeare would have read.)
- (00:11:07): During the Reign of the Queen of Persia, by Joan Chase — April 15, 2014
- (00:13:10): Fortunes of War: The Levant Trilogy, by Olivia Manning — May 13, 2014
- (00:14:40): Agostino, by Alberto Moravia — July 8, 2014
- (00:17:06): Last Words from Montmartre, by Qiu Miaojin — June 3, 2014
- (00:18:46): Zama, by Antonio di Benedetto — October 21, 2014
- (00:20:16): The Mad and the Bad, by Jean-Patrick Manchette — June 17, 2014
- (00:22:08): Fear, by Gabriel Chevallier — May 20, 2014
- (00:25:20): The Professor and the Siren, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa — July 15, 2014
- (00:27:48): You’ll Enjoy It When You Get There: The Selected Stories of Elizabeth Taylor — August 12, 2014
- (00:30:05): The Captain’s Daughter, by Alexander Pushkin — August 19, 2014
What’s On Being Blue about?
We do not know. However, we’ll be covering it in March, so (hopefully) we’ll know more then.
Thank you, Trevor & Brian. I was planning to read only the Patrick Leigh Fermor, AK Ramanujan and the Josep Pla, but after the podcast, I am interested in many others – Zama & Agostino seem very interesting and I will follow your podcasts closely on the rest.
One of the books that I am excited about is AK Ramanujan’s translation of Classical Tamil Poetry “The Interior Landscape” that is being released on Jan 14th. Between 600BC and 300BC, many tamil poets wrote the Akanaanuru (400 poems of love) and Puranaanooru (400 poems of war). Ramanujan translated many of them to English, with extensive footnotes and essays on the poems and the poets. These poems are remarkable in that there is almost no religious content and they almost seem like modern love poems.
What is being published is only a part of the Akanaanuru (400 poems of love), and one hopes NYRB will follow up with another volume on the Puranaanooru.
Yes, avataram, that collection looks fascinating. I received it a few weeks ago without knowing a thing about it, and I was pulled right in (though I have to now read only the introduction and the first few poems). I’ll be covering it here, so I look forward to hearing more from you on the subject :-) .
Really looking forward to read what you make of the Balkans trilogy since you mention you have just started it. I’ve heard mixed reports but the topic is one in which I’m really interested. I read Tisma in French translation some time ago and loved the writing and what he had to say about Novi Sad before, during and after WW2, so I’ll be interested to read your thoughts on that as well if you get round to it. Interesting too that NYRB brings it out not so long after publishing Goldstein’s 1941 – similar region, similar time period.