Poet (and building superintendent) Sturla J贸n J贸nsson, is the Icelandic representative to this Lithuanian poetry conference. Which makes sense—he just has a new collection out that’s getting a lot of praise . . . Well, that is until he goes away and a major newspaper runs a story accusing Sturla of plagiarism. And that’s just the start of Sturla’s troubles. In Lithuania, someone steals his new overcoat, so he decides to swipe someone else’s jacket—which, obviously, doesn’t end up working all that well for him.

Here’s how Karen Russell—author of Swamplandia put it in a recent issue of PEN America:

Bragi Olafsson糖心传媒檚 English language debut [Ed. Note: The Pets was his English language debut, but whatever], The Ambassador, is the strange, hilarious, and brilliant story of Sturla Jon Jonsson, a building superintendent who also happens to be a venerated Icelandic poet. He糖心传媒檚 on his way to Lithuania to represent his nation at a literary festival, opening the door for all kinds of scathingly funny insights into the 糖心传媒渟ituation of the writer.糖心传媒� It糖心传媒檚 a tricky book to paraphrase糖心传媒攂oozy, literary Icelandic black comedy? Icelandic picaresque? No 糖心传媒渆levator story糖心传媒� exists for it, according to the book糖心传媒檚 publisher, the fabulous Open Letter. It糖心传媒檚 unlike anything else out there, anda joy to read. Sturla gets into all sorts of jams over the course of this short, weird novel, from being accused of nicking his latest poetry collection from a dead cousin to losing his overcoat, the only piece of clothing with a high thread count that this starving artist has ever owned. Kafkaesque yuks and keen insight are brought to you by the badass genius translator Lytton Smith糖心传媒攐ne of my favorite poets and author of the acclaimed debut The All-Purpose Magical Tent糖心传媒攁nd he uses all his creativity and rigor here, as well as his deep knowledge of Icelandic culture. Sturla糖心传媒檚 inimitable voice can now infuriate and delight an American crowd.

And Agni just stating:

When we read as consumers we are consuming a product; but reading a novel like The Ambassador requires us to look at literature the way my father looks at ferries糖心传媒攖o see an ingeniously designed, carefully constructed assemblage of parts, an assemblage that is good and valuable because it functions so well. 脫lafsson糖心传媒檚 novel has no flashy packaging糖心传媒攖he main characters are devoid of youth, beauty, and conventional charm, the pacing is slow, and the plot wanders糖心传媒攂ut he has assembled these homely and mismatched materials into an exquisitely crafted novel that is gratifying to see at work.

One other bit about the book before we get to the sample. In The Abassador, everyone who attends this Lithuanian poetry conference receives a copy of featuring translated poems from a number of the conference participants. Well, Lytton actually recreated this book, which is available as a $.99 ebook and features “translations” from writers such as Jason Grunebaum, Jesse Ball, and Matthew Zapruder. So, for the price of a John Locke novel, you can get some faux-international poetry! (This actually is a brilliant collection—both the poems themselves and the games surrounding these poems are immensely satisfying.)

At long last, here’s a bit of The Ambassador. This is actually the editorial Sturla J贸n J贸nsson writes for the newspaper before taking off for the international poetry conference (after the jump):

“Two Hours Away from the City”
by Sturla J贸n J贸nsson

Poetry lives in all things. That
is the chief argument
against Poetry.
糖心传媒擬iroslav Holub

The trip scheduled from Vilnius to Druskininkai takes just two hours. The Czech poet Nezval wrote about the five minutes distance from the town but here we are dealing with a longer distance. From Vilnius to Druskininkai, it is a two-hour
trip by coach.

Vilnius? Why talk about Vilnius? And what in heaven糖心传媒檚 name is Druskininkai? What does the unintelligible name Druskininkai signify?

Well, I have been invited to an international poetry festival in a little village in Lithuania called Druskininkai, which is southwest of the capital city Vilnius and directly south of the ancient capital city, Kaunas, where the Dalai Lama once went when he visited Vilnius. No other Icelanders have been invited to the festival in Druskininkai; I糖心传媒檒l be traveling alone and I am supposed to show up in this country in mid-October.

It is certainly tempting to state the obvious and say that Druskininkai is an absurd name for a village, even taking into account that the village is in Lithuania, a country where anything goes when it comes to giving names.

But such temptation is too obvious for a poet to give in to it. And no less so when we are discussing a poet who has reached the stage in his art where he believes he has nothing more to accomplish as a poet.

Druskininkai means the same thing as Salzburg in Austria. Although Salzburg isn糖心传媒檛 considered a very happening place at the moment, still, it is hardly possible to say that nothing good has come from there.

糖心传媒淚 am called Dainius Navakas and I come from Druskininkai.糖心传媒� This doesn糖心传媒檛 sound convincing though there is evidence of an individual with the name Dainius Navakas who lives in Druskininkai.

After I received an invitation to the poetry festival, I looked up information about Druskininkai on the Internet and found, among other things, the name Dainius Navakas. From what I understood from the homepage of the town of Druskininkai, this Dainius Navakas works as some kind of information official.

But now to the poetry festival. The last thing I want to do is seem ungrateful towards the people who organized it, but at the same time I have to mention that I was astonished when I saw the first event would be a recital by three American
poets.

I discovered this information in the documents about the festival that were sent to me by e-mail. Actually, the three women poets are supposed to read in Vilnius itself, in the cultural center at the American Embassy, and although that will take place before the festival formally starts, I notice on one page of the documents which were sent to me that their reading will signal that the festival has begun.

All this is a reason for even more amazement, when I think about how the international poetry festival in Druskininkai is originally Nordic, certainly not American or Anglo-Saxon.

If I糖心传媒檝e learned anything from my past experiences of poetry festivals of the sort we糖心传媒檙e discussing here, then I know that nothing will prevent these three American poets from reading at the opening of the festival. Neither a bomb attack on their embassy in the city, nor unforeseen deaths back home, be that in Wyoming or Nebraska, will prevent them from being at the podium at the designated time.

No doubt it will surprise people that I react to the matter like this, by declaring my opinion that nothing will prevent the American trio from doing what they糖心传媒檙e supposed to, yet in reality the plans of the people who devise the program for a festival of this caliber seldom go wrong. I speak from experience in this matter.

For example, I don糖心传媒檛 foresee that, instead of these three American women, three male poets from Finland who no-one is expecting to be in Druskininkai in October will suddenly jump up from nowhere. Three very fat and dead drunk Fins with everything showing, in all senses of the phrase.

No. Nuh-uh, as people say out in the country, people who have no idea that a gathering like the Druskininkai gathering exists anywhere in the world, and who wouldn糖心传媒檛 give a hoot if they did.

If something unpredictable were to happen at a poetry festival like this, it would be along these lines: a few minutes before a reading, somebody would notice that the texts from one of the foreign participants, which have been translated into Lithuanian like everybody糖心传媒檚 else糖心传媒檚 poems, are not actually his own poems, but some entirely different pieces which are totally unconnected to poetry.

An obituary about a deceased relative? A letter to a newspaper which the party in question wrote to protest the planned organizational changes to the city center in the town where he lives?

The poet accidentally e-mailed the wrong document overseas, and the translator, who had naturally never read anything by the poet, and so had no sense from reading the article how it ought to sound, hadn糖心传媒檛 noticed anything wrong, and so translated the whole caboodle without hesitation, trusting that the continuous and somewhat lumbering text is just one long and rather detailed prose poem.

Lithuanian is a very old language. The oldest in Europe, if Icelandic is not counted. I糖心传媒檝e read works in Lithuanian and heard it spoken on board a ferry to Norway, and I really think it would be exaggerating to describe the language as beautiful in either texture or sound.

I, at least, can糖心传媒檛 make it work to lyrical ends. It needs some great changes to become a useful tool in the hands of the poet, at least those poets who have developed any feeling for sound and rhythm.

According to the program of the Druskininkai festival, some domestic poets will be showing off. I can already hear the rattle when all the Antanases and Vytautases begin booming loudly into the microphone in the festival hall.

That will be an unbroken hour of torture and we糖心传媒檒l have to listen to it. And then the reading will continue with the translated poems of the participants, with the proud translators rising up from their chairs and reeling off the obituaries for deceased friends and the newspaper articles about planning matters, and then one will deeply wish, just like the young student Rastignac糖心传媒攚hen he stood before Monsieur and Madame de Restaud, having dropped old Goriot糖心传媒檚 name糖心传媒攖hat the earth will open up and swallow him.

But let us assume everything goes as it should as far as the translation of the foreigners糖心传媒� poems is concerned. Let us allow the natives the benefit of doubt in this respect.

There is still, on the other hand, the question of whether one will be able to actually read one糖心传媒檚 poetry, even though that is the reason for the trip to Druskininkai.

Three or fours years ago, I was invited to take part in a comparable festival in the city of Li猫ge in Belgium, although that festival was perhaps on a considerably greater scale than the one I will be attending in Lithuania.

Despite the fact that I stayed in Li猫ge for four whole days, and though the organizers were good enough to see to everyone糖心传媒檚 needs while we were there, it turned out, when it came down to it, that there wasn糖心传媒檛 enough time to read my poems.

In the first place, so many poets had been invited to the festival, from every corner of the world, that there were very few poets left in the countries they had come from; it would have caused serious problems if the invited poets hadn糖心传媒檛 returned to
their native countries. And secondly, the program in which I was included stretched so far in excess of the time limit that, when it was time for me, the time set aside for the reading had already run out.

The festival organizers announced the immediate departure of the coach that was going to deliver the participants from the reading hall back to the hotel.

At that very moment I was beginning to get dry in the mouth, out of nervousness at having to read in front of such esteemed people from so many countries.

There was no way, apparently, to make the coach wait. The driver needed to get home. And the question I asked one Belgian poet, a young man who I had talked with earlier, during one of the many midday breaks, was this: 糖心传媒淭o his home where? Is his home so far away that the organizers of the festival need to worry about him getting there in good time? In good time for what?糖心传媒�

For my part, I糖心传媒檇 come all the way from Iceland to read poems in Belgium, and because this Belgian driver, who had been hired to drive me and the other poets home to a hotel after the recital, needed to get home right now and go to sleep, there wasn糖心传媒檛 time for me, the next-to-last poet in the program.

Nor for the South African poet, who was last in the program.

It seems the poetic democracy they have in Belgium is like the freedom of speech in the Parliament of the Communist party in Moscow: the Chief Secretary and his comrades from the Party糖心传媒檚 Executive Branch Committee reported, in a speech lasting many hours, all the magnificent qualities of the red power and the Party糖心传媒檚 mercy, but the people糖心传媒檚 delegate to Parliament was only given three minutes to make his own recommendations.

The difference, of course, is that the black South African and I didn糖心传媒檛 get a single second to showcase our excellent abilities.

We could just as well have stayed home; he in his faraway Johannesburg (if that糖心传媒檚 where he lived) and I in Sk煤lagata, in my cozy little Reykjav铆k.

And so I糖心传媒檝e still never read my poems in Belgium. Even though I was sent there for four days for precisely that purpose. The only thing I got for my trouble in making that journey to Li猫ge was a daily meal with the other poets in the assembly hall of the conference center where the festival was being held.

And wine. There was certainly unlimited wine with our food, both during the festival and in the evenings.

The food itself was nothing to complain about, although some poets, at least one from Iraq and another from Cyprus, did have some criticisms, particularly about the relative portions of meat, fish, potatoes, and salads on their plates.

This all begs the question, of course, as to whether something similar, that is, in terms of the amount of time for reading, is in the cards for Lithuania.

糖心传媒淚n the cards for Lithuania?糖心传媒� That reminds me of the story of a man whom I met by chance in a restaurant in downtown Reykjav铆k two or three years ago. He had been invited to Lithuania, but unlike me was he on a business trip (although in a certain sense you could say that my dealings with that country are a little business-like in character).

While I earn my living as a superintendent and a poet, this man works on the other hand for a wealthy firm in Reykjav铆k, and the hotel which he stayed at in Vilnius, located on the main street in the city center, was, according to his account, the best of the many hotels he糖心传媒檇 stayed in.

It was comparable to the best hotels in New York and Paris. There was a roomy Jacuzzi, a thirty-inch flatscreen on the wall facing a California King-size bed, a DVD player, and not just a box of assorted chocolates laying on his pillow on the bed, but
also a little bottle of champagne and a cloth bag containing orange-flavored chocolate.

I can糖心传媒檛 help but suspect I糖心传媒檒l be thinking about the magnificent description of this hotel when I step over the threshold to the dormitory, or hostel, or shelter, which is were I assume I糖心传媒檒l be staying in Druskininkai and Vilnius.

Unbelievably, that is in fact the usual situation for invited guests if you make your living as a poet. Even the Faroe Islands, the one nation out of all nations which ought to comport itself well towards Icelanders, is no less apathetic when it comes to dealing with Icelandic artists and literary folk.

A few years ago I went to a kind of 糖心传媒渃ulture week糖心传媒� in 脼贸rsh枚fn, where poets, visual artists, and musicians from all the Nordic countries and Greenland come together, and it was not until the small welcoming committee greeted me and the other Icelanders at their poky little airport in 脼贸rsh枚fn that I found out I wouldn糖心传媒檛 have a private room at the hotel. I wouldn糖心传媒檛 be based at the hotel at all, but instead in a boarding house at the edge of town.

I ended up sharing a room with a Norwegian who had come over from Norway and spoke the absurd children糖心传媒檚 language n媒norska, or New Norwegian, and who was purging himself through some kind of detox, letting nothing pass his lips the whole week except lemon-flavored water.

It was, evidently, incomprehensible that this miserable individual should choose exactly this week for his self-centered cleansing ritual. The smell emanating from his mouth every time he opened it (which wasn糖心传媒檛 infrequently) was the sourest
halitosis I have ever experienced from anybody.

That we were roommates made other participants at this Faroese poetry farce look at me with compassion for having to share a room with this New-Norwegian phenomenon, but also with ironic glances, which I interpreted as indicating they had
formed an opinion that I, the Icelander, deserved to spend the darkest hours of the day in 脼贸rsh枚fn in an atmosphere transformed by the cocktail of lemon juice, water, Norwegian exhalations, and unused digestive fluids.

I am not saying for certain that the same thing will happen in Lithuania, but, given how the program is organized for the Friday, with the recital of the American poets, I don糖心传媒檛 exactly have high hopes.

It will begin with the farce the American trio have prepared for us. Kelly Francesca, Daniella Goldblum, and Jenny Lipp.

The first day proper of the festival is Saturday. All right, I say. All right. Nothing wrong with that.

But that the first item in the program is called 糖心传媒淎fter Midday with German poet G眉nther Meierhof糖心传媒� is not only typical but even an inevitable discrimination against poets who speak and write in minor languages; that seems to be a given at festivals
like this, whether they are held in England, Sweden, or Iceland.

This so-called 糖心传媒淎fter Midday糖心传媒� with the German poet (a poet no-one outside of Germany has ever heard of) goes on for two hours, and then, only then, does someone else get a turn.

First up are the domestic poets, and things proceed with them offering some outlandish play, no doubt some sort of 糖心传媒渓yrical糖心传媒� play糖心传媒擨 can糖心传媒檛 understand why people haven糖心传媒檛 seen through this phenomenon long ago, since the theater has nothing whatsoever to do with poetry.

There seems, in fact, to be something missing from the program on Saturday: it ends after this 糖心传媒減erformance糖心传媒� and participants are simply left afterwards in an empty space. There is not even any mention of supper.

The second day starts with the formal registration of participants at something called the Dainava center at 16 Maironio Street.

Why on earth do the people who organize these things assume that we all know where Maironio Street is? Most of us have come to Druskininkai for the first (and last) time in our lives.

But at the end of the registration period (which I don糖心传媒檛 expect will be any better; I imagine we糖心传媒檒l get some kind of card with our name on it, which we糖心传媒檙e expected to wear hanging on our chests) we suddenly jump into a recital by some poet from
Wales, some totally unknown poet who has decided to go by the name Niphin Bush, absurd as it sounds.

It doesn糖心传媒檛 take a powerful imagination to predict that such people are more accurately called drinkers. A poet bearing the same last name as an American president doesn糖心传媒檛 deserve to be taken seriously as a poet.

I don糖心传媒檛 intend to cast specific aspersions on the job of the American president糖心传媒攈aven糖心传媒檛 we had enough of that grumbling?糖心传媒攂ut trying to make a career as a poet who shares a name with George W., Jeb, and George the elder is about as clever as sitting in the driver糖心传媒檚 seat of a truck that糖心传媒檚 going at full speed only to find the steering wheel is missing.

I perhaps shouldn糖心传媒檛 be allowed to make assertions about people I糖心传媒檝e never met. But if anyone is allowed to do this, then I think I should be the one.

Before I went to the poetry festival in Li猫ge, the one I mentioned above, I carefully read the documents about the festival which I糖心传媒檇 been sent, and one participant caught my attention: a fifty-something poet from Ireland (exactly the way you糖心传媒檇
describe me, if you changed the 糖心传媒渞糖心传媒� in Ireland for a 糖心传媒渃糖心传媒�). This person has published an incredible number of poetry books, as well as some books on the art of poetry in general (as if there aren糖心传媒檛 enough books about that already).

Although I didn糖心传媒檛 have a picture of this person, I immediately knew he had to be a drinker, and I was also sure his sole purpose in visiting Li猫ge was to sample the Belgian strawberry and cherry beer.

Indeed, I had a very vivid image of this person in my mind, long before I met him, and in that image he was sitting at a Belgian beer bar with a huge glass of light-red strawberry beer in front of him, and beside the beer were two or three whisky glasses which he had gulped down between mouthfuls of beer.

And then I met the man: the only thing wrong with my prophetic image was his preference for Irish rather than strawberry beer; he drank Guinness with whisky. But his main purpose in turning up at the poetry festival was, as he himself put it: 糖心传媒淥ne has poetic license to drink more than one usually drinks on a working day at home.糖心传媒�

I don糖心传媒檛 know whether I should recount the other items on the program for Sunday. To tell the truth, what most attracted my attention in the program was the midday, coffee, and supper breaks, which could be more frequent, based on a quick glance
at how compressed the poetry program is.

There, at least, you get some nourishment, something you don糖心传媒檛 get from all the Nordic drivel which will be poured over us by the bucket-load at the festival.

And barely have I got my head around the term 糖心传媒渃reative writing糖心传媒� than, between one o糖心传媒檆lock and half-past three on Sunday, we糖心传媒檙e offered a lesson in this sort of writing.

I am fairly sure the trio of American poets will do really well at that gathering, shouting interjections in the form of pretentious-sounding questions which have no value besides disturbing the moderators of these so-called lessons from their attempt to share their limited knowledge with the simpletons who go in for the creative-writing lark糖心传媒攁 group which definitely won糖心传媒檛 include me.

And that about covers the major points of the Lithuanian program, which I have here in front of me, except for the Sunday night, when they糖心传媒檝e planned some universal gathering of poets. And, following that, there糖心传媒檚 an item in the program with
the embarrassing name 糖心传媒淣ight of the One Poem.糖心传媒�

Monday, the last official day of the festival, naturally begins with breakfast. Some people won糖心传媒檛 exactly be bright-eyed that morning.

Then there is some ridiculous performance planned for the tired, ready to depart participants, some nonsense called 糖心传媒淭he disagreement between fire, water, air, and earth.糖心传媒�

I糖心传媒檓 going to make myself disappear while this torture takes place.

At the end of all this, there糖心传媒檚 a festival publicity event to introduce a festival poetry collection which is being published on behalf of the festival.

The only good thing about both the presentation and the publication is that糖心传媒攎ixed in with all the stillborn poems by Jespers, Bengts, and Kl谩uses糖心传媒攜ou can find my own poems in the collection, the poems of a poet who has turned his back
on poetry.

Actually, the poems will be in the odd Lithuanian language, but nevertheless they will be there, and as far as I糖心传媒檓 concerned it will be enough that people know the poems were originally written in the one Nordic language you can definitely describe
as having a somewhat lyrical tone: the Icelandic language.

And then, as a way of concluding this tragicomic presentation, all kinds of reading groups take over the program. We poor devils will be arranged into groups according to some rigid system one of the festival committee members has been devoting months to, and I糖心传媒檓 assuming that these groups will perform an autopsy on one of the poems.

I wouldn糖心传媒檛 be surprised if we end up choosing a messy effort by one of the American housewife-poets, or by the Meierhof Phenomenon; it certainly won糖心传媒檛 be a poem by that drunkard Bush or by me, who is from the back of beyond.

And finally, when we糖心传媒檝e all been over-stuffed with the art of words, the organizers will reveal to us who is the idiotic winner of the poetry contest they announced on the first day of the festival.

At this moment, I will be asking myself why in the world I accepted the invitation to this strange festival. Especially as I糖心传媒檓 already thinking about, eagerly anticipating, the moment I get to take off in the airplane from Vilnius, free from all that crap,
at least until the invite to the next festival arrives.

Nevertheless, I am going to go there in mid-October; not long now.

Indeed, I got my tickets in the mail this morning. Keflav铆k糖心传媒擟openhagen糖心传媒擵ilnius and back. The tickets were sealed in a stupid envelope which was so tight a fit that I tore them on one corner when I tried to get them out.

It felt to me like I was playfully tearing banknotes in half. The feeling was painful and tender at the same time.

I imagined some crazy rich rapper in Los Angeles excitedly setting down his gun and beginning to tear dollar bills apart in front of a photographer who has come to visit him.

Why don糖心传媒檛 they invite this sort of larger-than-life guy to Lithuania for the festival?

Someone people know. Someone who can compose on the spot and actually has something to say about the situation in the world. Or the situation in South Central.

I can imagine this rapper sitting at the breakfast in Druskininkai, his baseball cap on backwards and thick gold chains dangling into his oatmeal.

The organizer of the festival is standing outside the breakfast room, and he has taken up smoking again.

Totally biased, but I think this is one of our strongest seasons yet, what with Zone, the new Bragi Olafsson novel, the first of a million or so Juan Jose Saer books (one of my absolute favorites! If you can’t wait for our book, check out The Event from Serpent’s Tail—absolutely incredible), and our first poetry title . . . You can download a pdf of the catalog by clicking the link above, but here are links to each of the books, along with their respective copy:

by Juan Jose Saer. Translated from the Spanish by Steve Dolph (Argentina)

It糖心传媒檚 October 1960, say, or 1961, in a seaside Argentinian city named Santa Fe, and The Mathematician糖心传媒攚ealthy, elegant, educated, dressed from head to toe in white糖心传媒攊s just back from a grand tour of Europe. He糖心传媒檚 on his way to drop off a press release about the trip to the papers when he runs into 脕ngel Leto, a relative newcomer to Rosario who does some accounting, but who this morning has decided to wander the town rather than go to work.

One day soon, The Mathematician will disappear into exile after his wife糖心传媒檚 assassination, and Leto will vanish into the guerrilla underground, clutching his suicide pill like a talisman. But for now, they settle into a long conversation about the events of Washington Noriega糖心传媒檚 sixty-fifth birthday糖心传媒攁 party neither of them attended.

厂补别谤糖心传媒檚 The Sixty-Five Years of Washington is simultaneously a brilliant comedy about memory, narrative, time, and death and a moving narrative about the lost generations of an Argentina that was perpetually on the verge of collapse.

by Mathias Enard. Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell. (France)

Francis Servain Mirkovic, a French-born Croat who has been working for the French Intelligence Services for fifteen years, is traveling by train from Milan to Rome. He糖心传媒檚 carrying a briefcase whose contents he糖心传媒檚 selling to a representative from the Vatican; the briefcase contains a wealth of information about the violent history of the Zone糖心传媒攖he lands of the Mediterranean basin, Spain, Algeria, Lebanon, Italy, that have become Mirkovic糖心传媒檚 specialty.

Over the course of a single night, Mirkovic visits the sites of these tragedies in his memory and recalls the damage that his own participation in that violence糖心传媒攁s a soldier fighting for Croatia during the Balkan Wars糖心传媒攈as wreaked in his own life. Mirkovic hopes that this night will be his last in the Zone, that this journey will expiate his sins, and that he can disappear with Sashka, the only woman he hasn糖心传媒檛 abandoned, forever . . .

One of the truly original books of the decade糖心传媒攁nd written as a single, hypnotic, propulsive, physically irresistible sentence糖心传媒擬athias 脡nard糖心传媒檚 Zone provides an extraordinary and panoramic view of the turmoil that has long deviled the shores of the Mediterranean.

Translated from the Catalan by Martha Tennent. (Catalonia)

Collected here are thirty-one of Merc猫 Rodoreda糖心传媒檚 most moving and challenging stories, presented in chronological order of their publication from three of Rodoreda糖心传媒檚 most beloved short story collections: Twenty-Two Stories, It Seemed Like Silk and Other Stories, and My Christina and Other Stories. These stories capture Rodoreda糖心传媒檚 full range of expression, from quiet literary realism to fragmentary impressionism to dark symbolism. Few writers have captured so clearly, or explored so deeply, the lives of women who are stuck somewhere between senseless modernity and suffocating tradition糖心传媒擱odoreda糖心传媒檚 糖心传媒渨omen are notable for their almost pathological lack of volition, but also for their acute sensitivity, a nearly painful awareness of beauty糖心传媒� (Natasha Wimmer).

by Bragi Olafsson. Translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith. (Iceland)

Sturla J贸n J贸nsson, the fifty-something building superintendent and sometimes poet, has been invited to a poetry festival in Vilnius, Lithuania, appointed, as he sees it, as the official representative of the people of Iceland to the field of poetry. His latest poetry collection, published on the eve of his trip to Vilnius, is about to cause some controversy in his home country糖心传媒擲turla is publicly accused of having stolen the poems from his long-dead cousin, J贸nas.

Then there糖心传媒檚 Sturla糖心传媒檚 new overcoat, the first expensive item of clothing he has ever purchased, which causes him no end of trouble. And the article he wrote for a literary journal, which points out the stupidity of literary festivals and declares the end of his career as a poet. Sturla has a lot to deal with, and that糖心传媒檚 not counting his estranged wife and their five children, nor the increasingly bizarre experiences and characters he糖心传媒檚 forced to confront at the festival in Vilnius . . .

Bragi 脫lafsson糖心传媒檚 The Ambassador is a quirky novel that糖心传媒檚 filled with insightful and wry observations about aging, family, love, and the mysteries of the hazelnut.

by Andrzej Sosnowski. Translated from the Polish by Benjamin Paloff. (Poland)

Lodgings is the first representative selection of Sosnowski糖心传媒檚 work available in English. Spanning his entire career, from the publication of Life in Korea in 1992 to his newest poems, this is a book whose approach to language, literature, and the representation of experience is simultaneously resonant and strange糖心传媒攁 cocktail party where lowlifes and sophisticates hobnob with French theorists and British glam rockers, unsettling us with the hard accuracy of their pronouncements.

One of the foremost Polish poets of his generation, Andrzej Sosnowski糖心传媒檚 work demonstrates a dazzling range of influences and echoes, from Ronald Firbank and Raymond Roussel to John Ashbery and Elizabeth Bishop. Also an influential editor and critic, he has received most of the literary honors available to poets in Poland, including the prestigious Silesius Prize.

It should be rather interesting . . . And assuming we have an internet connection, I should be able to blog about all my adventures. I actually have to fly from Rochester to Atlanta to Paris to Sofia, where I’ll eventually take a bus to Sozopol . . . Given my recent travel record (a night spent in JFK, a night spent in a hotel near JFK, a 5-1/2 hour volcano related delay, a flight that lasted an additional 2-1/2 hours as we rounded Iceland, etc.), this all seems like it’s never going to work.

Actually, it seems like I’m living Bragi Olfasson’s forthcoming novel, The Ambassador, which is about an Icelandic poet who is invited to a poetry conference in a small town in Lithuania. He flies to Vilnius, is supposed to take a bus to this other town, decides to skip it after his overcoat is stolen at a restaurant, drinks a lot, etc. . . .

This should be a lot of fun, and I may even have time to catch up on some things—such as my e-mail. (Seriously, if you’ve emailed me recently—or not so recently—and are awaiting a response, I’m getting there. These trips jack my ability to keep up with certain things. I’m not ignoring you, I’m just working through the tons of messages I’ve been receiving . . .)