“Cerebral and resonant. . . . The interplay between the external surroundings in the park and the man’s inner thoughts is unforced. Silent affinities between him and the park’s denizens—unrealized in actuality, where he barely interacts with them, but vividly imagined in his writerly, hypothetical world—are particularly inspiring.”

Sophie Hughes’s full review is available over at TLS (registration required).

And you can read more about Sergio Chejfec’s My Two Worlds right here.

“Sergio Chejfec is surely one of the most intelligent and precise of contemporary writers, and Open Letter has made an important artistic choice in introducing him to a new audience. . . . One of the novel’s strengths is the painterly quality with which Chejfec percipiently arranges this minimal plot sequence in lines of prose. . . . It is as though the narrator is traveling through a landscape of memory, of what is both remembered and, more importantly, what cannot be remembered.”

Jordan Anderson’s full review isn’t available online, but you can find out more about World Literature Today at their website.

And you can read more about Sergio Chejfec’s My Two Worlds right here.

January 23, 2012 — Dubravka Ugresic’s Karaoke Culture, a collection of essays published by Open Letter, was named on Saturday as a 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.

“To have one of our books selected as a NBCC Award finalist—one of the most prestigious honors in U.S. publishing—brings real validation to us here at Open Letter and to our mission of bringing the best literature from around the world to English-language readers,” said publisher Chad W. Post. “To have that book be Karaoke Culture is all the more thrilling. Author Dubravka Ugresic is one of Europe’s shrewdest—and most entertaining—cultural thinkers, and we’re exceptionally proud to have our name appear alongside hers.”

Nominated in the category of criticism, Karaoke Culture is collection of candid and opinionated essays about Ugresic’s insights into pop culture and conformism, translated from Croatian by David Williams, Ellen Elias-Bursać, and Celia Hawkesworth.

Ugresic is the author of numerous works of fiction, including The Museum of Unconditional Surrender and The Ministry of Pain, and several essay collections, such as Thank You for Not Reading and Nobody’s Home (also published by Open Letter).

Ugresic’s Karaoke Culture will compete against several other celebrated books, including David Bellos’s Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything (Faber and Faber), Geoff Dyer’s Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews (Graywolf), Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence (Doubleday), and Ellen Willis’s Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music (University of Minnesota Press).

The National Book Critics Circle is a nonprofit organization of book reviewers and critics that honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature, in part through annual awards for the year’s outstanding books. Works are nominated and chosen by leading book critics.

Winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards will be announced at a ceremony on Thursday, March 8, at 6 p.m. at The New School in New York. For the full list of 2012 NBCC Award finalists, click here, and click here for more on Karaoke Culture.

For additional information on Open Letter at the University of Rochester and this announcement, contact Chad W. Post at 585.319.0823 or chad.post@rochester.edu.

“Ugresic returns with a brilliant collection of timely essays. . . . Ugresic moves nimbly from karaoke to Communism, from IKEA to the symbolism of insects in literature, providing smart and witty cultural insight alongside Eastern European history.”

The full review is available over at Publishers Weekly.

And you can read more about Dubravka Ugresic’s Karaoke Culture right here.

“The opening story in the Catalan author’s collection imagines a grotesque ritual among a family in which one finger is severed from a hand on one’s ninth birthday. . . . With perfectly tuned black humor, Monzó allegorizes the chopping (and the anxiety it causes) into a riff on the arbitrariness of tradition.”

The complete list by Mark Athitakis is available over at Washington City Paper.

And you can read more about Quim Monzó’s Guadalajara right here.

“At once a rich philosophical tome and vision-altering spoof of the same, this ‘meta-goulash’ will interest readers of Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinths and Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman.”

Olive Mullet’s full review is available over at Publishers Weekly.

And you can read more about Svetislav Basara’s Cyclist Conspiracy right here.

“Scars is a beautifully-structured lesson in humility and perspective, accented with sparkling, if dark, humor. Dolph’s lively translation captures the underlying play and tension in Saer’s writing. . . . Scars delivers the rare combination of entertaining suspense and thought-provoking, intelligent writing.”

Gwendolyn Dawson’s full review is available over at Publishing Perspectives.

And you can read more about Juan José Saer Scars right here.

“Ugresic, a game and inquisitive critic, looks at culture from all angles, which sometimes means picking up the mic. . . . Karaoke Culture is an essential investigation of our times.”

Carolyn Kellogg’s full review is available over at the Los Angeles Times.

And you can read more about Dubravka Ugresic’s Karaoke Cuulture right here.

“Reading Karaoke Culture is—in the best way possible—much like sitting with a highly caffeinated intellectual over tea. . . . Karaoke Culture is a rarity: a thoughtful, personal, and informative work of socio-cultural critique that doesn’t take itself too seriously.”

Larissa Kyzer’s full review is available over at The L Magazine.

And you can read more about Dubravka Ugresic’s Karaoke Culture right here.

“‎This virtuosic novel-in-stories from the late Argentinean writer Juan José Saer investigates a violent crime from four perspectives. . . . Each section is a study of characters living on the edge of sanity, together building to the final stark voice of the murderer.”

Michael Beeman’s full review is available over at ForeWord.

And you can read more about Can Xue’s Vertical Motion right here.