Susan Bernofsky

1 month ago | lithub.com | Emily Temple |Jenny Erpenbeck |Susan Bernofsky

Small presses have had a rough year, but as the literary world continues to conglomerate, we at Literary Hub think they’re more important than ever. Which is why, every (work) day in March—which just so happens to be National Small Press Month—a Lit Hub staff member will be recommending a small press book that they love. The only rule of this game is that there are no rules, except that the books we recommend must have been published, at some time, and in some place, by a small press.

Dec 8, 2024 | columbiaspectator.com | Susan Bernofsky |Audrea Chen

Thanks so much for producing an annotated version of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s recent report. One point where you, unfortunately, fail to counter misinformation contained in the report is when you repeat the report’s insinuation that a University senator’s personal convictions might disqualify them—a “potential conflict of interest”—from serving in the senate or on a particular committee. Instead, you ought to have contextualized this claim.

Nov 13, 2024 | lrb.co.uk | Yoko Tawada |Margaret Mitsutani |Susan Bernofsky |Adam Thirlwell

In the era​ of the cosmopolitan languages of power, like Arabic or Latin, it might have seemed obvious that someone would choose to write in a second language. It only became something to be thought about, to be argued over and interpreted, in the era when vernaculars became nationalist instruments, and a writer was bound to their first language not just pragmatically but politically. But still: was Adelbert von Chamisso anguished by his move from French to German after the French Revolution?

Oct 4, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Susan Bernofsky

Djinns by Fatma Aydemir, translated from German by Jon Cho-Polizzi. University of Wisconsin Press, 298 pages. 2024. The family novel is that most modular of genres. While, like crime or realism, there are certain thematic expectations—variations on the theme of intergenerational conflict—it can expand or warp to accommodate all sorts of storytelling.

Jul 31, 2024 | asymptotejournal.com | Yoko Tawada |Susan Bernofsky

Yoko Tawada’s latest novel, Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel, presents us with the anatomy of a mind consumed by passion for a dead poet’s oeuvre. Ostensibly narrating the tale of a literary scholar mired in pandemic-era depression, the text expands into a reflection on various forms of friendship—and, one might venture, redemption—that might inhere between readers.