news

12/24
• A note about holiday shipping: We will post orders made to December 13. Any orders coming in after that date will have to wait until after the holidays. For one, the post office is just way too overwhelmed, as is everyone else, and the chances of loss and/or damage are greater. For two, we are gone for the latter half of December.

As always, we are very appreciative of all the support given us over this past year. Thank you one and all!

We wish everyone a great holiday season and nothing but joy in the new year! See you in 2025.

10/24
• Gerhard Rühm, author of Cake & Prostheses, will be appearing at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Prague on Monday, Oct. 7, at 6 p.m.
The address is: Jungmannovo nám. 18, Prague 1.
Info and RSVP here.

09/24
• A Prague Flâneur came back from the printers last month and is now available in the UK, and is on the way to the US for a November release date.

• Some recent reviews:
Transparent Body at SEEfest

The Unfinished Life of Phoebe Hicks at:
The Berliner
Full Stop
roughghosts
Book Beat
Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings

A Prague Flâneur at:
The Complete Review
Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings

06/24
• The Unfinished Life of Phoebe Hicks is back from the printer and available for order. It will be available in the UK in July and the US in November. The author, Agnieszka Taborska, and translator, Ursula Phillips, will be presenting the book at the Polish Hearth Club (Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London) on Sunday, June 30, at 6 p.m.. More info here.

• Minor Literature[s] have posted selections from Alexander Booth's excellent translation of Cake & Prostheses by Gerhard Rühm.

• A Prague Flâneur by Vítězslav Nezval will be back from the printers in July ... finally ... we hope.

03/24
• Artist, musician, poet, dissident, Pavel Zajíček passed on March 5. We met him the 1990s when he returned for good to Prague from exile, and he was an inspiration to us in trying to find, and stay on, our own path. And I don't think we every saw a bad show from his band DG 307. Condolences to his family and friends. He will be sorely missed. His Wiki page is here.

• March 17 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimír Boudník, one of the greatest Czech artists of the 20th century and founder of Explosionalism who was immortalized in Bohumil Hrabal's The Tender Barbarian.

02/24
• Now available in the UK / Commonwealth : Transparent Body & Other Texts by Max Blecher and Cake & Prostheses by Gerhard Rühm.

Thank you to the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Austrian Ministry of Culture respectively for supporting these translations by Gabi Reigh and Alexander Booth.

• Also now available directly from the publisher : On the Needles of These Days by the two Jindřichs, Heisler and Štyrský.

01/24
• Happy New Year! It's going to be a good one ... seriously.

• The good folks at Minor Literature[s] have posted a couple of excerpts from our forthcoming (Feb. 12 according to the so-called pub date) Transparent Body & Other Texts by Max Blecher. The story "Love" here and the interview with Blecher here.

• Congrats to Mark Kanak, translator of our Walter Serner editions among others, on the publication of his novel Lie Detector by Ritter Verlag in a German / English edition.

12/23
• Transparent Body & Other Texts by Max Blecher and Cake & Prostheses by Gerhard Rühm are both back from the printers.

• Stephan Delbos reviews The Illuminated Burrow by Max Blecher here.

• Happy Holidays and New Year to all! See you next year.

10/23
• Update on preorders and pre-holiday shipping:
Transparent Body & Other Texts by Max Blecher will ship in November to December 8, then again in early January.

Cake & Prostheses by Gerhard Rühm will ship to December 8 if back from the printer by the end of November, but in early January regardless.

All orders placed before December 8 will be shipped this year. Any orders placed after that date will be shipped first week of January.

09/23
• Hope all had a great summer. We're back from our perambulations and ready for fall.

• Here's a clip of Phil Shoenfelt reading/performing at the Sprachsalz Literature Festival in mid-September to celebrate the long-awaited German translation of Junkie Love.

• In July, we brought out a new edition of Eva Švankmajerová's Baradla Cave (tr. Gwendolyn Albert), and we're looking forward to publishing more of Eva's work in the near future.

• Over the next two months we'll be printing the following titles:

Transparent Body & Other Texts by Max Blecher (tr. Gabi Reigh)

Cake & Prostheses by Gerhard Rühm (tr. Alexander Booth)

Both have a UK publication date in February 2024 (US in summer) and are available for preorder (which, by the way, really helps).

• Gabi's translation of one of the pieces from Transparent Body & Other Texts appears in the latest issue of LARB Quarterly.

05/23
• An interview with Gabi Reigh on translating Romanian literature in The London Magazine here.

04/23
• Soren Gauger has been awarded the S.I. Witkiewicz Prize, announcement here.

• Bogdan Suceava, author of Miruna, a Tale, has received a L. Donald Shields Excellence in Scholarship and Creativity Award, announcement here.

• Will Atkin has a great essay on Gherasim Luca's The Passive Vampire in the latest issue (no. 24) of Dada/Surrealism, titled “Demonic Surrealism in Bucharest: Black Magic, Gothicism, and Nihilism in Gherasim Luca’s The Passive Vampire (1941-45).” Definitely worth a read.

02/23
• Marek Šindelka will have his play "The Feminist" premiering this month in Brno.

• Gabi Reigh's stellar translation of The Illuminated Burrow by Max Blecher has received a glowing review in The TLS and The London Magazine.

01/23
• Happy New Year!

11/22
• Our new edition of The Diary of Mr. Pinke by Ewald Murrer is now available. Thanks to Paper Jam for the care they put into the printing and binding.

• Join us on Mastodon : @TwistedSpoon@mastodon.social.

09/22
• We are happy to announce that House of the Nine Devils and The Illuminated Burrow are now available in the UK and directly from us. They are due in the US in November.

We are grateful to the Romanian Cultural Institute for finding the extra funds to support Gabi Reigh's wonder translation of The Illuminated Burrow, and the Austrian Ministry of Culture and Germany's Neustart Kultur for supporting the publication and David Burnett's translation of House of the Nine Devils.

07/22
• A retrospective exhibition of Witkacy's work is currently running at The National Museum in Warsaw until October 9. More on the exhibition and the artist here and here.

05/22
• Congrats to Joshua Cohen on receiving a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Netanyahus.

04/22
• This is a good overview by Juliette Bretan in The Public Domain Review of Witkacy's Narcotics and his importance for Polish modernism.

03/22
• Recent reviews:
Responses • Kafka's Prague at The Complete Review
Woman in the Plural at Book Beat

• Congrats Marek Šindelka and Vojtěch Mašek on winning a Czech Lion Award for Best Screenplay for Occupation.

• The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York recently hosted a conversation with Sean Cotter and Gabi Reigh (we work with both) about translating Romanian classics. You can watch it here.

02/22
• Marek Šindelka and Vojtěch Mašek have been nominated for a 2021 Czech Lion Award for best screenplay for the film Occupation, which is really good.
His story "The Relay" has recently been posted at BODY.

01/22
• Happy New Year! Hope it's a bright one.

To start it off, some recent reviews:
Responses • Kafka's Prague at roughghosts and Tears In the Fence and Dublin Review of Books
I Burn Paris at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings
Primeval and Other Times at Gallimaufry Book Studio

• Marcela Sulak discusses her writing and translation work at Rattlecast.

12/21
• Radio Prague has a feature up here on Marek Šindelka and his work, including his incredible novel Aberrant.

• Leaf by leaf has posted a video review of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.

• A new printing of The Passive Vampire by Gherasim Luca is now available for direct order.

• Please note, any orders made after December 15 will be posted right after the holidays, the first week of January.
Be safe, be well, have a great holiday season, and thank you so much for helping to make this year a success.

8/21
• Mark Kanak's radio play "Tollhaus," featuring Blixa Bargeld, took third at the Berlin Radioplay Festival. It can be "viewed" (heard) here, including an interview with Mark that follows.

• Speaking of which, Mark's translation of Walter Serner's Last Loosening is nicely reviewed at The Complete Review.

7/21
• Congrats to Mark Kanak on being named a finalist for the Berlin Radioplay Festival (August 12-15 at the Akademie der Künste) for “Tollhaus” (Madhouse), a collaborative project with Blixa Bargeld in a solo performance. The YouTube trailer is here. The story will be published next year in German by Ritter Verlag.
Blixa and Mark are also collaborating on an English-language radio play by/about Walter Serner that should premiere this fall.

• Marek Šindelka's Aberrant (including the original Czech edition Chyba) is featured as part of Slovenia's European Readr series that runs until the end of the year as part of the country's turn as EU Council President. The project is a curated selection of one literary work from each EU Member State in the original language and in English translation and available to read via their platform free of charge for
the duration of Slovenia's presidency.

• Responses • Kafka's Prague by Jiří Kolář and translated by Ryan Scott should be back from the printer at the end of the month. It's available for pre-order here.

6/21
• Our special edition of Ladislav Klíma's A Postmortem Dream is back from the printers and orders have been going out. Thanks to Pavel Růt for the great artwork, more to come on that score.

5/21
• Apofenie Magazine has posted a good interview with Marek Šindelka.

4/21
• After shipping delays from overweight boats and congested ports and general Brexit nonsense, Woman in the Plural has finally made it to the distributors in the US. Thanks to all those bookstores who've been patiently waiting for stock.

3/21
• A look at Polish authors and psychotropics in their work here, with reference inter alia to Olga Tokarczuk's Primeval and Other Times and Witkacy's Narcotics.

• Stephan Delbos will be taking part in a discussion on translating poetry from Slavic languages at the Stanza Festival's Poetry Café on March 14. Info here.

2/21
• Woman in the Plural by Vítězslav Nezval is now out in the UK/Europe.

• Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is reviewed at The Modern Novel, which also reviews Woman in the Plural here.

• The Manchester Review of Books as well has a good review of Woman in the Plural here.

12/20
• Woman in the Plural is back from the printer and available for pre-order. New orders will be posted after January 1.

11/20
• Radio Prague has posted a conversation, in English, with Marek Šindelka, author of Aberrant.

• In The New Yorker (here), Pasha Malla compares Bruno Jasieński's
I Burn Paris to our current predicament.

• A review of Aviaries by John Howard appears in the latest issue of Wormwood.

10/20
• Congratulations to Olga Tokarczuk on receiving Italy's La storia in un romanzo 2020 award, given by the Pordenonelegge Literary Festival. And she is shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, which has posted a podcast with her and translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones here.

• Next year we will be publishing Jiří Kolář's text Responses together with "Kafka's Prague," a series of crumplages he paired to the text for its original publication in 1984 by the exile publishing house Index. It is being translated by Ryan Scott, who also translated Kolář's A User's Manual.

• In the latest issue of the London Review of Books (no. 22, October 2020), Hal Foster has an essay on Walter Serner, aptly titled "How to Prepare for Debates."

9/20
• Edition 69 is out this month in the US, through SCB Distributors. Or you can order directly from us via PayPal here. A recent review at Biblioklept is here.

• Congrats to Ewald Murrer (whose The Diary of Mr. Pinke we will be bringing out in a new edition) on winning a Magnesia Litera for poetry book of the year.

8/20
• Last Loosening, at long last, is out in the UK and in the US next month. You can order here.

• Reviews of A User's Manual have been posted by Rain Taxi Review and The Complete Review.

• We are here and there until the latter half of September. Email replies won't be prompt, but eventually will happen. Any book orders will be posted when we're able. The delay shouldn't be inordinate. Thanks.

5/20
• Edition 69 is back from the printers and will be in the UK shortly. You can order directly here. Any pre-orders previously made have been posted.

• We are excited to announce that we have acquired the rights to a selection of texts by Gerhard Rühm, a co-founder of Wiener Gruppe.

• In the TLS, Benjamin Paloff surveys recent Hrabal offerings in English, including The Tender Barbarian.

4/20
• A huge thanks to everyone who has ordered directly from us. The numbers have provided a much needed boost both to finances and morale. We've been able to ship out orders at least once a week over the past month and a half and will now be aggregating at least twice a week, so the time lag should be reduced. Hopefully the post office will soon be relaxing their limited open hours as well, and that should also help us get orders out sooner. Even so, we still cannot guarantee an order will be posted within 48 hours, though it should be within a few days, unless conditions change (i.e., mandatory quarantine). We cannot express how much your support is appreciated, whether you're ordering directly from us or from an indie bookshop. Thank you kindly and stay well.

• Sympathetic reviews have been posted at:
Messenger's Booker of A User's Manual
Winstonsdad of I, City.

3/20
• Marcela Sulak, the translator of A Bouquet and May, has a new book out from Black Lawrence Press: Mouth Full of Seeds, described as a "hybrid memoir" that also touches on her translations of Czech fairy tales.

• Seth Rogoff provides a good overview on Asymptote of Róbert Gál's work in English translation to date, including Signs & Symptoms, which you can order directly from us.

• Stephan Delbos has been named the first ever Poet Laureate of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

• Update on the forthcoming publication of Edition 69: The UK publication date has been pushed from April 27 to May 27 (and hopefully it will not have to be pushed back further). We are still taking pre-orders. For any pre-orders already made, we apologize for the delay, but think it's best that the printing and shipping happen a few weeks later than originally planned. Thanks for understanding.

12/19
• If you missed Olga Tokarczuk's inspiring Nobel Lecture, you can watch it here (in Polish) and read it here (in English).

• The Tender Barbarian by Bohumil Hrabal, with texts and artwork from Vladimír Boudník, is out. A review is up at Bookmunch.

• A User's Manual by Jiří Kolář (text and images) and translated by Ryan Scott is now available in the US. Reviews are up at Bookmunch and roughghosts.

• The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch by Ladislav Klíma is now available in the US. The latest review is here.

9-10/19
• Olga Tokarczuk has been awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. Kudos to her and her wonderful translator, Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

• A User's Manual by Jiří Kolář (text and images) and translated by Ryan Scott is now available in the UK and from us directly. It will be in the U.S. in November.

• Great interview with Travis Jeppesen at KGB Bar Lit.

• The Critical Flame has posted [here] a previously unpublished interview with Tomaž Šalamun.

8/19
• A really good profile of Olga Tokarczuk and overview of her work in The New Yorker.
And The Modern Novel reviews Primeval and Other Times here.

• Kirsten Lodge, translator of Jiří Karásek’s A Gothic Soul, has an excellent short essay about Czech Decadence at Slovo a Smysl here: "The Insidious Poison of Degeneration: Vampires in Czech Decadence." Definitely worth a read.

• update on new releases:
Our new edition of Ladislav Klíma's The Sufferings or Prince Sternenhoch is back from the printer.

A User's Manual was supposed to be delivered a couple of weeks ago, but the printer experienced some unforeseen vacation time. It should be here first week of September and then out the door to pre-orders and the distributors.

6-7/19
• Congrats to Mark Kanak on the publication of his book Tractatus illogico-insanus by the excellent Ritter Verlag in a dual English/German edition. More info here.

A radioplay version will be performed at the summer festival in Leipzig devoted to radioplays, Hörspielsommer, on Saturday, July 13,
9:30 p.m. as part of the "English evening." The festival's entire program and general info (in German) is here.

• Latest reviews:
Aviaries at Rain Taxi [double review]
Matthew Jakubowski's "experimental review" at Textshop Experiments

Absolute Gravedigger in Phosphor

3-4/19
• On Thursday, April 18, at 6:30 pm, Tereza Novická will be reading at the AAU Library from her translation of Aviaries by Zuzana Brabcová. Details here.

• On top of winning it last year, Olga Tokarczuk has once again been shortlisted for this year's Man Booker International Prize for Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

• Stephan Delbos's new poetry collection Light Reading is now out. He will launch it in Prague on May 22 here.

• Latest reviews:
Dreamverse at Rain Taxi

Aviaries at:
The Arkansas International
New York Journal of Books
Messenger's Booker
Winstondad's
The Complete Review

1/19
• A couple of new reviews of Jindřich Štyrský's Dreamverse are posted at Messenger's Booker and Good Reading Copy.

• Marek Šindelka's co-authored graphic novel Svatá Barbora [Saint Barbara] has won this year's Muriel Award. The report, in English, at Radio Prague.

• Congrats to Stephan Delbos on the imminent publication of his latest poetry collection Light Reading.

• Speaking of which, Róbert Gál has a new book forthcoming in March. Info here.

• Aviaries is back from the printer and available for pre-order.

10/18
• Dreamverse by Jindřich Štyrský is now out in the UK and will be in the US first week of December. Read an early review here.

• Olga Tokarczuk has been shortlisted for the US National Book Award for Flights (translated by Jennifer Croft).

9/18
• Congrats to Marek Šindelka on the German edition of his novel Aberrant, now out as Der Fehler from Residenz Verlag.

• The latest issue of the Boston Review has a good overview on Olga Tokarczuk's rewriting of Poland.

• Radio Helsinki has produced an audio presentation of Mark Kanak's Tractatus-Illogico-Insanus, forthcoming in an English-German edition from Ritter Verlag in 2019. You can listen to it here.

8/18
• Olga Tokarczuk is profiled in the NY Times for the US publication of her novel Flights.

• Dreamverse is at the printer, and we'll have copies the latter part of September. It can be pre-ordered now (which is greatly appreciated).

7/18
• Sadly, Sándor Kányádi, author of Dancing Embers, has passed. An obituary from translator Paul Sohar is here.

6/18
• Antonia-Lloyd Jones, translator of Primeval and Other Times, is this year's recipient of the Transatlantyk Prize.

• Travis Jeppesen's account of his stays in North Korea, See You Again in Pyongyang, has just been published. Can't wait to read it.

5/18
• Olga Tokarczuk's Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft (Fitzcarraldo Editions), has won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize.

• Isabel Fargo Cole is the 2018 recipient of the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for her translation of Wolfgang Hilbig's Old Rendering Plant, published by Two Lines Press.

• Congrats to David Short on receiving the 2018 Jiří Theiner Award for the promotion of Czech Literature.

4/18
• Olga Tokarczuk's novel Flights (trans. by Jennifer Croft) has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. It is well deserved. A really good profile of Olga was recently published in The Guardian.

• "Sternenhoch," the opera, based on Ladislav Klíma's The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch, has premiered at the National Theater's New Stage. Info here.

• A podcast devoted to I Burn Paris and its historical context here.

• A review of Aberrant is in the spring 2018 issue of Wormwood.

• Reviews of Witkacy's Narcotics have been posted at Biblioklept, Bookmunch, and the Complete Review.

2/18
• A good interview with Stephan Delbos, translator of The Absolute Gravedigger, has been posted at The Biblio File.

• Congrats to Isabel Fargo Cole, translator of Hermann Ungar's Boys & Murderers, on her novel Die grüne Grenze being nominated for a Leipzig Book Fair Prize.

• A great retrospective of Kamil Lhoták, who illustrated Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, has opened at Obecní dům [The Municipal House] and runs until April 22.

1/18
• Congrats to Marek Tomin on receiving a Paul Celan Fellowship to work on his translation of Ladislav Klíma's The World as Consciousness and Nothing (which we will publish at some point).

• Soren Gauger will be discussing his translation of Narcotics by Stanisław Igancy Witkiewicz at Massolit (Kraków) on Thursday, January 18 at 6 p.m.
Details here.

Copyright © 1992-2025 Twisted Spoon Press