Monthly Archive: May 2011

Writing to stay sane: 2 = 3 0

Writing to stay sane: 2 = 3

Yesterday I finished first draft of my new novel. Which means that during last 2 years I’ve written 3 new novels: ‘Wheel’, ‘Raccoon’ and ‘Experiment № 1’ (working title), — and rewritten 2 existing ones (‘Cocaine’ and ‘Earth without water’).

Vera sold out on Amazon Italia in a day? 0

Vera sold out on Amazon Italia in a day?

I’m not sure how long ‘Vera’ was in stock on Amazon Italy, but from what I know, it took ‘Vera’ about two weeks to get to the store.
I’ve noticed the book for the first time this Saturday — being the #3 fastest growing bestseller on Amazon Italia with more than 50.000% growth on the list of the ‘Most Popular Products in Books’ (I Prodotti del Memento in Libri).

Vera di Aleksandr Skorobogatov 0

Vera di Aleksandr Skorobogatov

In questo ritratto ipnotico di un marito geloso e di una moglie che sembra offrirsi come vittima volontaria non è chiaro, tuttavia, che cosa mai abbia visto Vera in Nikolaj per sposarlo – anche il lettore si domanda, insieme a Nikolaj, perché una donna così bella, un’attrice di successo, stia insieme ad un uomo che è un fallito nullafacente. Misteri dell’amore, o di quelle forme di nevrosi che legano un uomo e una donna perché si incastrano l’una nell’altra: il carnefice padrone ha bisogno della sua vittima che, a sua volta, ha bisogno di lui.

Blockbusterization of literature, or some more thoughts about SEELANGS email 0

Blockbusterization of literature, or some more thoughts about SEELANGS email

Bernard Kreise, one of the greatest, if not the greatest French translator of Russian literature, told me that about 80% of all books being published in France, are translations of English-speaking, mainly American authors. Which means that all literature by local French authors and all translations from all other languages represent these residual, laughable 20%.
What I found even more difficult to process, is a piece of statistics I found a couple of years ago on a site of some American publishing house. It said that from all titles published during that year in the US, — which was an impressive amount of 180.000+ titles, — only about 800 were foreign adult literature in translation.

The end is the beginning is the end 0

The end is the beginning is the end

There is a thing I can not exactly grasp: how does the reader loose his interest, not in the works by some particular author who’s getting worse, but in the literature of an entire county, even of a number of countries and almost of a whole continent?