Literature: Britain's Stiff Upper Lip Is Real—at Least in Literature - Olga Khazan

Britain's literature has grown less emotional since the 1960s, but American literature has become more so.  

Overall, English-language literature has used far fewer emotionally-charged words over time, but American writers have bucked the trend: They've ramped up their use of "mood words" in the past few decades as Brits have grown more stoic.

The only emotion that's become more prevalent over time is "fear," which has occurred in books much more frequently since the 1970s. Maybe we can thank Stephen King for that.

Read more: Britain's Stiff Upper Lip Is Real—at Least in Literature - Olga Khazan - The Atlantic

Belarus: Prize-winner Khalip: 'Freedom is indivisible'

Belarusian journalist Irina Khalip has been awarded the Hermann Kesten Prize for her courage in promoting democracy. She is under house arrest and was unable to attend Sunday's ceremony held in Darmstadt, Germany.

Mrs Khalip says about her house arrest:  "I'm only nominally free. In reality, I've been placed under house arrest. I'm not allowed to leave Belarus. I have to report to the police every Monday. I'm not allowed to leave my house after 10 p.m. and sometimes the police check late at night whether I'm at home."

In July 2013, the court will decide whether I will be sent to a penal colony, be released, or whether or not they will adjourn my imprisonment.


Read more: Prize-winner Khalip: 'Freedom is indivisible' | Europe | DW.DE | 11.11.2012

China, world economy dragon mummy to Europe

The Chinese People’s Republic has opened up to negotiations in the international arena. In official documents they have substituted the term ‘peace rise’ when referring to the country’s model of development with the more harmonious slogan ‘peace development’. 30% of its foreign investment has already been 'China's scramble for Europe' on ecfr.eu" directed to the Mediterranean countries otherwise known as the PIIGS "Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy, countries most troubled by the economic crisis. They actually look forward to doing more business with central and eastern Europe.

All of this growth has led to a growing consumption amidst the young Chinese generation. Take the case of Guo Jingming. In Europe the teenage romance novel author is known for accusations of plagiarism in three of his bestsellers. However in China the 28-year-old’s status remains elevated to that of ‘hero’, perhaps also in light of the some twelve million euros (9.94 million pounds) he has earned since the beginning of his literary career. He represents this kind of ‘Chinese dream’ of ‘living fast and loving hard’ in a life sauce which smacks of Asian sweet-and-sour. ‘Europe is regarded by many Chinese as a continent of intellectuals, which is too conservative and too focused on its own affairs,’ explains the French Courrier International. In a word, Europe is ‘boring’. Meanwhile, European literature and culture has brought our attention to China via the works of the late Polish and Italian journalists Ryszard Kapuściński and Tiziano Terzani, or the director Bernardo Bertolucci’s outstanding film The Last Emperor (1987).

For more: China, world economy dragon mummy to Europe

Literature: - Britain -The dark heart of Dickens: How writer was an abusive husband who seduced a woman 26 years his junior - by Simon Heffer

Look at some Christmas cards and one feature will link many of them: a scene with snow, in the England before the railways, with a coach and horses charging up to a cosy house or inn, and red-faced men in top hats sitting inside and on top of the vehicle.


If it is not Mr Pickwick arriving at Dingley Dell on the Muggleton coach, with his codfish and his six barrels of oysters, and fortified by hot brandy and water, it is inspired by the idea of it.

Charles Dickens’s novel of 1836, like his Christmas Carol of 1843, has in 175 years lost none of its power to describe the perfect English festivities. As Dickens wrote: ‘How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken?’


It is not the least of Dickens’s achievements that millions who have never read a word of his novels know so much about his world.

Yet, as we near his bicentenary, we should remember that this was a man tortured by the memory of poverty as a child, thin-skinned, cruel to his wife, dismissive of his children, a slave to overwork and, ultimately, victim of an early death, worn out not least in the effort to support himself, his estranged wife, and his mistress and her family. 

For more: The dark heart of Dickens: How writer was an abusive husband who seduced a woman 26 years his junior | Mail Online

Literature - "A Gentleman's Homecoming" - by Ruth Axtell Morren

"It's been six years since Luke Travis has seen his native England…and his son, Sam. But his hopes for a joyful reunion are shattered when he learns that Sam wants nothing to do with him. There's one ray of hope—Luke's former sister-in-law, Bobbie Gardner. The kindhearted woman has been a mother to Sam for all these years, and she promises to help mend the breach between father and son. But can Luke trust another Gardner? His wife betrayed and abandoned him, and his father-in-law took his son away. Bobbie must prove to him that she is not her sister, or her father, but a woman who is all that Luke could wish for in a wife."

In a review, Patricia R.Gaddis writes about A Gentleman's Homecoming : "What I like best about Ruth Morren's stories is that they are so unique. She incorporates historical occurrences that I find very interesting and informative. In this case how one of the first underground train lines came to be. Also, how difficult it was for a woman to establish her ability as a civil engineer in a time when it was considered a "man's" job and a "women's place" was in the home. The romance between the hero and heroine comes across as very real and believable. The conversation flow in all Ruth's books feels very natural and flows nicely. I highly recommend Ruth Axtell Morren as an author. I've not read anything by her yet that I haven't enjoyed."


Interested in buying A Gentleman's Homecoming go to Amazon 

EU-Digest

Author dives into France's dark past for Sarah's Key - by G. ALLEN JOHNSON

She's not really among France's ruling elite, but de Rosnay is certainly among the cultural elite after her novel Sarah's Key became a breakout hit, first in France and then internationally, and transformed an obscure author into a literary star. It has been adapted into a film starring Kristin Scott Thomas that opens Friday.

But "let them eat cake" is not her style. De Rosnay, 49, struggled for years to become a successful writer, forcing herself to write at the kitchen table in pre-dawn hours as she raised two children. Her big break came just over four years ago when Héloïse d'Ormesson, who ran a small publishing house, saw potential in Sarah's Key, which had been piling up rejection slips from bigger publishers for two years. Even after her success, de Rosnay had to prove that she was French in order to keep her citizenship (she was born in France, but her parents were not).

You might recognize de Rosnay's tenacity in Julia, the journalist at the heart of Sarah's Key, played by Thomas in the film. Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner and featuring a breakout performance by 10-year-old Mélusine Mayance, it is about a young Jewish girl in 1942 caught up in the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup and sent to a Nazi extermination camp, and a journalist who, 60 years later, tries to find out what happened to her.

For more: Author dives into France's dark past for Sarah's Key | Life | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

RFI - Book fair in Montreuil France shows kids still reading - by Christine Pizziol-Grière

For the complete report from RFI click on this link

We’ve heard it said often enough, children aren’t reading books any more. They’re listening to music on mp3, or sending cell phone sms’s, or watching tv. So how does this affect the children's book industry? Le Salon du livre et de la presse jeunesse, the French Children’s Book Fair, provided an occasion to find out. The Book Fair took place in the Paris suburb of Montreuil at the end of November. With over 150,000 visitors it’s the biggest event of its kind in Europe. From pre-schoolers perusing glossy picture books to teenagers seeking the latest tome in their favourite series, the aisles and exhibitors stands of the Book Fair were full of curious youngsters, with adults often looking on with just-as-eager interest.

Indeed, the frontier between children’s and adult literature is nowadays not so clearcut. When popular books lead to popular films (e.g. Harry Potter, Twilight, Les Enfants Baudélaire, Astérix, Eragon, Le Petit Nicolas….) their success galvanizes children into reading other titles in the series and similar books in the genre.If the children’s book market is flourishing it’s also because public authorities in France do much to promote reading, by supporting the industry and literary events such as this one.

So do parents worry that internet will replace the time kids spend reading? Despite competition from internet, tv and video games, and in a difficult economic climate, a trip to the Children’s Book Fair revealed that in France today children’s literature is alive and well.

NY Times:The Netherlands - 'Scripture for the Eyes' - At the Museum of Biblical Art, Dutch Printmakers and the Good Book - by Ken Johnsen

For the complete report from the NYTimes.com click on this link

The Netherlands - Scripture for the Eyes' - At the Museum of Biblical Art, Dutch Printmakers and the Good Book - by Ken Johnsen

Just how provocative the Good Book has been can be seen in “Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the 16th Century” at the Museum of Biblical Art. Among the 79 works in this superb show are pieces by some of the biggest names in Western printmaking. Woodcuts and engravings by Lucas van Leyden and Hendrick Goltzius alone would make a visit worthwhile.

While some viewers may be fascinated by the scholarly issues and biblical themes that the exhibition so adroitly frames, the pictorial and narrative excitement will captivate many others.What remains undeniable, though, is the ability of Dutch printmakers to measure the heights and plumb the depths of the European soul.

New York Times: Sweden - Lost in Translation? The Nobel Prize’s Secretary Snubs U.S. Lit - by Charles McGrath

For the complete report from the NYTimes.com click on this link

Sweden - Lost in Translation? The Nobel Prize’s Secretary Snubs U.S. Lit - by Charles McGrath

If you’re John Updike, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo or Joyce Carol Oates, you don’t have to worry about whether the phone bill has been paid. You won’t be getting the call from Stockholm next week.On Tuesday, Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, the organization that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, gave an interview to The Associated Press and, while not dropping hints about this year’s winner, seemed to rule out, pretty much, the chances of any American writer. “Europe is still the center of the literary world,” he said, not the United States, and he suggested that American writers were “too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture.” He added: “The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.”

The Swedes read, you have to give them that — they buy more books per capita than the citizens of just about any other country — and they probably care more than anyone else does about their prize. In the United States, a Nobel usually doesn’t produce even the modest uptick in sales that a Pulitzer or a National Book Award does. That fact may underlie Mr. Engdahl’s comments, and especially his observation that we don’t translate enough foreign literature. It’s true.

Publishers battle to sign up Europe's sex sensation - by Jason Burke

Charlotte Roche - sex with a smile on your face

For the complete report from guardian.co.uk Books click on this link

Publishers battle to sign up Europe's sex sensation - by Jason Burke

Charlotte Roche's exploration of filth in all its meanings now tops Germany's literary charts. Soon it will hit the shelves in her country of birth. Wetlands, which has beaten Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns and Ken Follett's latest to the top of Amazon's international sales list, has sparked a frenzy among major British publishers. Roche's German publishers last week refused to speak to The Observer or to arrange an interview with Roche to avoid pre-empting what is expected to be a massive UK deal and publicity campaign. 'No, nothing, impossible,' they said.

For whether it is the fantasies about sex, the polemics against the use of deodorants, the avocado cores grown specially for use in masturbation, or the detailed and inventive passages of scatological or genital description, Wetlands has left few indifferent.