Crossing the Divide: New Vessel Press

December 10, 2014 · by Christina Kaylor | in The Story of Books | tagged Authors and book promotion, book marketing, Brooklyn Book Festival, Challenges of translating culture as well as words, e-books, Few books translated in English each year, Frankfort Book Fair, Ko Un, Liana Finck illustrator, Michael Z. Wise, New Vessel Press, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Ross Ufberg, Seamus Heaney Beowulf, stealth translation, translated literature, translation as art and craft | 8 Comments

Someone’s coming from the other world, Hiss of night rain. Someone’s going there now. The two are sure to meet. —Ko Un (from Poetry: The Translation Issue, November 2014) Ko Un’s poem perfectly illustrates to me how translated works help us cross the divide between cultures to get to where “The two are sure to […]

The Tie That Wears the Man: Choking Uniformity in I Called Him Necktie

September 10, 2014 · by Stephanie Knapp | in Book Reviews | tagged hikikomori, Holden Caulfield, I Called Him Necktie, Japanese youth and withdrawal, Milena Michiko Flasar, New Vessel Press, novels in translation, Samuel Beckett, Sheila Dickie, Waiting for Godot | 3 Comments

Every day from nine to six, a salaryman sits on a park bench. Unable to tell his wife he’s lost his job, the man boards the same train he has boarded for thirty years, bento box in hand. At noon each day he unwraps the box and slowly, in great contemplation, chews each bite. I […]