A Different Stripe

Translation awards season

Photo: Caitlin Burke, via flickr

We haven't shared the good news, of which there is quite a bit:

Joel Rotenberg's translation of Stefan Zweig's Post-Office Girl is a finalist for the 2009 PEN Translation Prize

The late Douglas Parmée's translation of Guy de Maupassant's Afloat is a runner up for the French-American Foundation's Translation Prize

And Jamey Gambrell's translation of Vladimir Sorokin's Ice has been shortlisted for the Rossica Translation Prize, which honors excellence in translations from Russian

Mind the Small Print

This is brass 4 point Times Roman, which will eventually be used to typeset a miniature book, made by P & S Engraving in East Sussex.

P & S is one of the last places on earth where you can actually find type and tools to hand-make books, especially something as rare as this. The type will have to be set with tweezers, and the book itself will probably need to be read by a magnifying glass.

I was lucky enough to be able to visit P & S last month, and I insisted they show me some of the handmade versions of the type we use here at NYRB (of which Times Roman is a rare but recurring one).

Multimedia Monday: Inspired by Fénéon's Novels in Three Lines

Joanna Neborsky, a student in the MFA illustration program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, has produced an illustrated edition of many of Félix Fénéon's concise reports of crimes and misdeads misdeeds in early 20th-century France (aka Novels in Three Lines) as her thesis project. The work will be part of an MFA student exhibit that's on view until May 16, 2009 at the Visual Arts Gallery.

You can see more of Ms. Neborsky's work at the website of Gigantic Magazine.

s