First of all, there was some sad news today, for Sir Terry Pratchett died aged 66. Coincidentally, it’s been almost twenty years now since I first discovered Terry Pratchett’s books as a student in London after reading an interview with him in an early issue of SFX.
Here is Chistopher Priest’s obituary of Sir Terry from the Guardian. I also have links to several other obituaries and tributes from around the web in my weekly link round-up over at the Speculative Fiction Showcase.
The Leipzig Book Fair started yesterday with the announcement of the winners of the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair. The biggest surprise was that a poetry collection, Regentonnenvariationen (Rain water barrel variations) by Jan Wagner won in the fiction category, the first poetry collection ever to win this award. Kulturzeit has an interview with Jan Wagner as well as a video of him reading “Giersch”, one of his poems. “Giersch” is the German name of a plant known as bishop’s weed in English BTW.
Meanwhile, the non-fiction prize went to Philipp Therr for Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent. Eine Geschichte des neoliberalen Europa (New order on the old continent: A history of neoliberal Europe). The translation award – yes, the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair awards translators, which makes me forgive some of the more embarrassing misteps of the award in the past – went to Mirjam Pressler for translating Judas by Amos Oz from Hebrew into German.
Finally, here are some photos of pretty springtime flowers in our garden. Not bishop’s weed, but crocuses:
Pretty crocuses (croci, to be exact) in the garden.
sending...