The Man Booker International Prize, International Language, & International Provocation

Congratulations to the nominees for the Man Booker International Prize, including Josip Novakovich, the Croatian-Canadian author of, most recently, Three Deaths. My money, though, is on Lydia Davis to take the prize, based on nothing so much as how deeply I adore her work. If you have a minute (I swear that’s all it takes), here are a few of her short stories on NPR.

Tim Parks revisits his rant on the Americanization of his European novels—written as they are in the Queen’s English—and comes to a familiar conclusion: sometimes limits, be they linguistic, editorial, or national, make for good literature.

Brett Easton Ellis has maybe found his most perfect art form in the tweet, maybe?