NYRB NEWS
Vladimir Sorokin’s ‘The Norm’ Coming in 2026
In 2026, NYRB Classics will publish Max Lawton’s translation of The Norm, one of the earliest novels written by Russian iconoclast Vladimir Sorokin. Though 1985’s The Queue was his first published novel, he began work on The Norm years earlier. Banned in the pre-Perestroika USSR, the full Russian text was finally published in 1994. It has never before been available in English.
Ferit Edgü (1936–2024)
Ferit Edgü, a beloved writer and publisher of Turkish literature, has died at the age of 88. A novella and a collection of short stories by Edgü, The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales (trans. Aron Aji), was published in a single volume by NYRB Classics in 2023 and was named a finalist for the EBRD Literature Prize.
‘When We Cease to Understand the World’ on NYT’s Best of the 21st Century List
Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World (trans. Adrian Nathan West) is #83 on The New York Times’s ongoing list of “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.”
'Historiae' and 'Lies and Sorcery' Shortlisted for 2024 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
Antonella Anedda's Historiae, translated by Patrizio Ceccagnoli and Susan Stewart, and Elsa Morante's Lies and Sorcery, translated by Jenny McPhee, are shortlisted for the 2024 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
Paul Auster (1947–2024)
Paul Auster died late last month at the age of 77. His novels, memoirs, and poems were renowned and read all around the world. He was also a gifted translator of French literature. His first book, published in 1972, was A Little Anthology of Surrealist Poets, and he later edited and translated The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, published by NYRB Classics in 2005. He wrote a delightful and illuminating introduction to our edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny by Papa too.
‘The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales’ Named as EBRD Literature Prize Finalist
Three finalists have been announced for the 2024 EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) Literature Prize, and the list includes the recent NYRB Classic The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales by Ferit Edgü, translated from the Turkish by Aron Aji.
Sorokin Exhibition at WhiteBox Art Space
An exhibition of AI-assisted artwork by Vladimir Sorokin, BLUE LARD #cancelrussianculture, is on view until May 4, 2024 at the WhiteBox art space in New York City. Based around the writer’s notorious novel Blue Lard, recently translated into English by Max Lawton in a new NYRB Classics edition, the artwork depicts clones of famous Russian writers—from Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky to Akhmatova—in various tableaux with the titular blue lard.
Edwin Frank Interviewed in ‘The Point’
A conversation between NYRB editor Edwin Frank and the writer Scott Sherman, titled “How the Story Turns Out,” was published this week in the magazine The Point. Among other subjects, they discuss literature in translation, MFA programs, contemporary book reviewing, the survival of the novel, and the early years and inner workings of the NYRB Classics series, including the books that “got away.”