Nepenthe

La mort de Léon Tolstoï le 20 novembre 1910 dans une petite gare du sud de la Russie prit une dimension mythologique au moment même où elle se produisit. Pathé, le pionnier des actualités filmées, réalisa l’une de ses premières images animées autour de cet événement. Lénine avait déclaré deux ans auparavant que Tolstoï était  «un miroir de la révolution» . Les révolutionnaires communistes, comme le gouvernement russe, guettèrent l’effet qu’aurait la mort du grand anarchiste sur le peuple russe, qui sentit qu’il n’avait pas seulement perdu un grand artiste mais aussi la voix la plus éloquente qui ait jamais tonné en sa faveur contre de monstrueuses injustices. À des questions aussi apparemment simples que la manière dont il nous faut vivre, il donnait des réponses qui ébranlaient l’âme même des tsars, des armées, de la police secrète et des inquisiteurs de l’Église. À la fin de sa vie, des millions de personnes du monde entier étaient suspendues à ses lèvres. Une semaine après sa ...

Lighthouses were often time located in remote areas and as such had no access to city services such as libraries, opera houses, entertainment, etc. that most people enjoyed who lived in a town or city. As light keeping was a lonely profession in most cases supplies were brought to them by lighthouse tender ships. One of the items the tender supplied was a library box on each visit as pictured to the left. Library boxes were filled with books and switched from station to station to supply different reading materials to the families. In 1876 portable libraries were first introduced in the Light-House Establishment and furnished to all light vessels and inaccessible offshore light stations with a selection of reading materials. These libraries were contained in a portable wooden case, each with a printed listing of the contents posted inside the door. Proper arrangements were made for the exchange of these libraries at intervals, and for revision of the contents as books became obsolete ...

Outside the Anglophone world, it is not unusual for novelists and poets to work at some point in their lives as translators. Though most will say that they did so mainly to subsidise their own writing, it is often clear, when you look at that writing, that it has been enriched by the imaginary conversations they've had with the poets and novelists whose words they have translated. If there is such a thing as world literature, it is because today's most interesting writers are also well‑travelled readers and a lot of what they read is in translation. An up-and-coming Colombian novelist might be inspired not just by Borges, Conrad and Faulkner, but by contemporary novelists from Asia, Africa and Europe; his literary response to their work will go on to influence what his contemporaries on the other side of the world write next. These complex patterns of cross-fertilisation would end overnight if it were not for literary translators and the publishers who support them. So you...

Tim Parks, novelist and translator On a small, damp farm in northern Holland, after 30 years of tending cows and sheep against his will, Helmer Van Wonderen decides to take control of his life. Quietly melodramatic, intimate, tender and ruthless, Gerbrand Bakker's  The Twin  is one of the strangest and finest novels I have come across in many years. Margaret Jull Costa , translator of Javier Marías and José Saramago People tend to be rather snooty about Constance Garnett these days and yet when I was old enough to have tickets to the adult lending library, it was in her words that I read all the great Russians. I still remember reading with astonishment her translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot . Jo Nesbø, novelist Hunger  by Knut Hamsun. I read it when I was 17 and it suited my illusion of the romantic, suffering artist perfectly. The main character is wandering the streets of Oslo, madly in love, with no money, struggling to maintain some dignity. It's...

12 de Novembro, Sexta-Feira: 14:30 – Abertura. 15:00 – Painel “Clássicos da Ficção Científica Portuguesa”, com Luís Filipe Silva, António de Macedo, João Barreiros e João Seixas. 16:00 – Painel “Nova Fantasia Portuguesa para Novos Leitores”, com Fábio Ventura, Bruno Martins Soares e Bruno Matos. 17:00 – Painel “Arte Fantástica”, moderado por Ana Maria Baptista. 18:00 – Intervalo. 18:30 – Lançamento “A Simbólica do Espaço em O Senhor dos Anéis”, com a autora Maria do Rosário Monteiro. 19:00 – Painel “Fantasia Portuguesa no Feminino”, com Madalena Santos, Inês Botelho e Susana Almeida. 13 de Novembro, Sábado: 10:30 – A Mecânica da Escrita Fantástica (I) – “Worldbuilding”, por Ricardo Pinto. 11:15 – A Mecânica da Escrita Fantástica (II) – “Invented Technology and Atmosphere”, por Stephen Hunt. 12:00 – A Mecânica da Escrita Fantástica (III) – “Characters and Characterization”, por Peter V. Brett. 14:30 – “Fórum Fantástico: 5 anos, e agora?”, à conversa com Rogério Ribeiro e Sa...

Nadine Gordimer is 87 this year and as resistant to autobiography as ever. The Nobel prize winner, small, chic, straight-backed as a dancer, says "my private life is my private life" – a practical as well as a moral concern: what she calls the "jealous hoarding of private experience for transmutation into fiction".   It makes reading her non-fiction, collected earlier this year in a single volume and plain to the point of snappish, an exercise in sifting for lapses: the "bun-faced" nuns who taught her at school; her early "talent for showing off". The only thing that could deflect her from work, she once wrote, was "being in love", whereupon everything else flew out the window. She smiles indulgently. "Yes, I used to make bargains. I used to say I don't care if that book's published or not, it's the man that I want." It is, for Gordimer, a year of collections; on the heels of the non-fiction, an equa...

Os meus momentos preferidos (para assistir) a azul Colóquio Mensageiros das Estrelas / Messengers from the Stars Conference Ficção Científica e Fantasia / On Science Fiction and Fantasy 2-5 Novembro 2010 / 2 nd -5 th November 2010 CEAUL/FLUL     2 de Novembro / November 2 nd 13.30 – 14.00 – Abertura / Opening Session Prof. António Feijó ; Prof. Isabel Fernandes ; Prof. Francisco Contente Domingues ; Prof. Isabel Barbudo ; Prof. Angélica Varandas e Prof. Adelaide Serras – Sala / Room 2.13 14.00 – 15.00 –  Plenária / Plenary Session : Henrique Leitão (FCUL/CIHC) “Galileu, o Mensageiro das Estrelas”. Moderador / Chair: Isabel Fernandes – Sala / Room 2.13 15.00 – 15.30 – “O uso da realidade: perspectivas sobre a ciência na ficção” – Luís Filipe Silva . Moderador / Chair: Isabel Barbudo – Sala / Room 2.13 15.30 – 16.30 – Painel 1 / Panel Session 1 : “Fantasia e BD/Fantasy and Graphic Novels” – Moderador / Chair: Angélica Varandas – S...