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Karel Čapek – born in 1890, died in 1938 of pneumonia, although some say that the true cause was the sadness after the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia. He wrote novels, plays, short stories, children and travel books. He is famous for coming up with the word „robot”, although he said it was his...

Well, of course we're going to have this thread. It was very hard for me to choose. I've read some great books this year and the list kept changing in the process of writing this post. But here it is: Natsume Soseki Kusamakura/The Three Cornered World Milan Kundera The Joke Alejo...

Barbara Demick is an American journalist. She was a correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer in Eastern Europe from 1993 to 1997. From 1997 to 2001 she worked in the Middle East. After that she became Los Angeles Times’ correspondent in Korea. She moved to Beijing to work as the bureau chief...

Svetlana Alexievich writes: „During the most terrible war of the 20th century a woman had to become a soldier. She not only rescued and bandaged the wounded; she also fired a sniper's rifle, dropped bombs, blew up bridges, went reconnoitering, and captured identification prisoners. A woman...

Completely by accident I found a writer whose work seems interesting and of whom I've never heard before. I'm not sure which flag to use to mark this thread because Predrag Matvejević was born in Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina) to a Croatian mother and a Russian father. He then emigrated to...

The video is quite old but maybe you haven't all seen it. Just watch it. I won't write anything more, not to spoil the fun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2011 It has been announced some time ago (17 November). The winner is: The Wavewatcher’s Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney A short interview with the author in this podcast...

I found this today in my subscribtion box and I thought I'd share it. A great idea. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ht4qiDRZE8&feature=g-u

Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki (born in 1962) is a Polish poet. So far he has published nine books of poetry. To the best of my knowledge one book of translated poems in available in English. „Peregrinary” came out in 2008, published by Zephyr Press, translated by Bill Johnston. The translator is...

Lyonel Trouillot (31 December 1956) is a Haitian writer, poet, journalist and lecturer. He writes in Haitian Creol and French. His latest novel was shortlisted for this year’s Prix Goncourt. From what I found only two of his books have been translated into English. Children of heros is the...

Dany Laferrière (born Windsor Kléber Laferrière, in 13 April 1953). A novelist and journalist born and raised in Haiti, now lives in Canada. Writes in French. He grew up under the regime of Duvalier. Laferrière became a journalist and a broadcaster, he later emigrated after his colleague was...

Odysseus Elytis (Οδυσσέας Ελύτης) (November 2, 1911 – March 18, 1996) was a modernist Greek Poet. In 1979 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature which made him the second Greek laureate after Giorgos Seferis. His bio and list of works...

Stanisław Barańczak (born in 1946) is a Polish poet, writer, lecturer, translator and a critic. He taught Polish literature course at Harvard University. He translates mainly form English (Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost among others). Together with Clare Cavanagh he translated many of...

R. Po-chia Hsia Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (1992, Yale University Press) Blood libel is a false accusation that Jews kill Christian children to make matzot using their blood. It has been in the repertoire of antisemites for nine centuries now. These accusations have led to...

Guy Deutscher obtained an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in linguistics. He’s an author of three books: Syntactic Change in Akkadian(2000), The Unfolding of Language (2005), and Through the Language Glass(2010). The two latter books have been mentioned on the WLF briefly in the...

Mariusz Szczygieł is a Polish journalist. He works for Gazeta Wyborcza. In his thirties he started to concentrate his writing on the Czech Republic. What triggered his interest was his interview with Helena Vondráčková, who told him about another Czech singer, Marta Kubišová, banned from...

A.B.Yehoshua is an Isreaeli writer. Born in a Sephardic family in 1936, he studied literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University. He lived and taught for years in Paris, after that he began teaching at the University of Haifa. Many of his books are available in English and in other...

Hiromi Kawakami is a Japanese writer . Born 1 April, 1958. So far, I’ve read one book of short stories „Tread On A Snake”. I’ve done some google search and unfortunately, there’s only a partial translation of her work in some Japanese stories compilation in English. The good news is, there are...