It was the publisher, not Parshley, who insisted on cutting the text; in the end he cut 145 of the original 972 pages, or almost 15 per cent of the original.

Now we have the new translation. Many will turn to it with high hopes. Is it the definitive translation? Does it convey Beauvoir's voice and style? Unfortunately not.

"We are gradually becoming a mini-Iran," said Kaniuk. "Everyone talks about the threat of Iran's bombs and missiles, but they forget that the worst thing is this lousy religion, which is flourishing nowadays. They're taking over our lives. It's terrible what they've done to the Jewish religion. Yona Wallach is a terrific poet."

The chances that anyone apart from a couple of Estonians living in exile will read an Estonian-language book are next to zero. True lovers of Estonia prefer to put in a personal appearance and visit us here to experience this rare language in its spoken form.

... The market for Estonian authors is and remains Estonian, and it makes no great difference whether the works are in electronic form or in paper form.

North Korea, the planet's deepest information void, appears to be dabbling with electronic books (e-books)

"North Korea will have less complications surrounding copyright issues compared to the South, and with the government pushing the project directly, the country seems to have acquired a wealth of e-book content over a relatively short period of time," Kim told Yonhap News.

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award for "Literature" went this year to Hafnaoui Baali from Algeria for his book Comparative Cultural Criticism- an Introduction (published by Arab Scientific Publishers, Inc 2007)

Quite apart from being unfortunate for Amis, there is another danger in all this. Younger writers may look at the fate that has befallen him and tell themselves that there is little value in striving to engage with the present, no point in being outspoken.

Culture and the Arts Minister John Day said he made the decision to strengthen the successful and popular WA Premier's Book Awards (PBA), while the Australia-Asia Literary Award (AALA) would be discontinued.

two fluent, native English speakers raised in the United States, have both chosen Spanish as their literary language; something that I'll admit struck me at first as crazy. I mean, isn't writing fiction hard enough already?

Juan Rulfo. Read him in English and was like, What's the big deal? Read him in Spanish and couldn't write for three weeks, you know what I'm saying?

I tried reading Rulfo in English. This was after I read him in Spanish. The short stories of El llano en llamas were OK in translation. Pedro Páramo was not. I don't think I've ever made it past the second page of that translation.

While meeting last month to decide the winner of the $100K Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, the judges found themselves unable to eliminate one of the two outstanding final candidates. After much deliberation, an unusual solution was found.

The two contenders would share the top honor, the runner-up category would be eliminated, and the monies allocated for the winner and runner-up prizes would be combined into one award, to be split by the two winners, with each author taking home $62,500.

All his books are short, and the shortest of all is La Mélancholie de Zidane, a ten-page essay which Minuit, charmingly but quite properly, published in 2006 as a stand-alone book.

• The Bathroom
• Camera
• Making Love
• Monsieur
• Running Away
• Television

The director of the Jung Foundation on Lampung heritage, Christian Heru Cahyo, said the provincial administration had yet to play a role in developing Lampung literature and culture or help writers get their work written published.

"The Lampung provincial administration is too busy with the 'Visit Lampung Year program'," he said.

"There has been no real effort to preserve Lampung literature and culture. Moreover, no magazine or newspaper runs Lampung works."

three of America's leading independent publishers speak with Melville House co-publisher Dennis Loy Johnson about their vision for translated books: Barbara Epler of New Directions, Dan Simon of Seven Stories, and Edwin Frank of New York Review of Books Classics.

María Zambrano, Miguel Delibes, José Ángel Valente, Antonio Gamoneda and Carmen Martín Gaite were some of the Spanish authors included in the show. Hungarian and Belgian literature was also included using recreations of the works of Sándor Márai and Hugo Claus, respectively.

With the aim of elevating awareness and engendering appreciation of Spanish literature in the United States, this triennial $10,000 prize has been created by the Cultural Committee and Board of Directors of Queen Sofía Spanish Institute to honor the best English-language translation of a work of fiction written in Castilian by a Spanish author and published by an American imprint.