'The translation, by Anna Aslanyan, carries the text with admirable clarity—no small feat given its density, barbed turns, and occasional plunge into feverish abstraction. Her steady hand stops the book from tipping into chaos.' artlyst.com/books/pyotr-...

Anna Aslanyan: Revisiting a novel that marched towards modernity

London launch, 16 December. Tickets free, copies thrown in, RSVP essential

Tykes on Bikes Raymond Bykes, Western Union No. 23, Norfolk, Va. Said he was fourteen years old. Works until after one A.M. every night. He is precocious and not a little "tough." Documented by American sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine mashable.com/feature/bike...

Unhappy hooker www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

True Crime meets Gravedigger’s Humour

'The prose flows in sync with the protagonist’s thoughts: now rolling along, now jolting on the tracks, now braking hard.' Anna Aslanyan: A ‘so-called writer’ takes a railway journey into his past

Oscar Wilde's BL card has finally been reissued. Tbh, the gesture would have looked more generous two years ago. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I've just updated the apersonalanthology.com website with @anna-aslanyan.bsky.social's excellent selection of a dozen favourite short stories. Check them out here!

‘Some librarians were fired; some received death threats. At one point in the film, a grandfather turns up at a school meeting with a gun to tell the library supporters: “We know what you do. We know where you live.”’ Anna Aslanyan on book bans and censorship: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

‘An investigation by Index on Censorship showed that it’s mainly LGBT-themed books that get challenged; another study indicated that American pro-censorship groups are beginning to influence the situation in the UK.’ Anna Aslanyan on book bans, from the blog www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

‘In May, when the National Endowment for the Arts withdrew funding from more than 550 organisations in the US, the cuts were described as ‘economic censorship’. There’s nothing new about that, either.’ Anna Aslanyan on libraries, book bans and censorship, from the blog www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

To mark @bannedbooksweek.bsky.social, I wrote a blog piece for @lrb.co.uk. Warning: contains all sorts of things. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/oc...

London friends, I'll be interviewing Hannah Ross, the author of Revolutions – www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/hanna... – on 11 November. Book your free tickets here: www.tickettailor.com/events/hackn...

In which I plug a dozen short stories, starting with one translated by me. apersonalanthology.substack.com/p/a-personal...

There's still time to sign up to receive @anna-aslanyan.bsky.social's Personal Anthology, her pick and introduction of a dozen favourite short stories. Hitting inboxes at 2pm. Sign up here if you don't subscribe already. RT if you don't! apersonalanthology.substack.com/about

An unheroic hero: Ginster, by Siegfried Kracauer, reviewed. ✍️ Anna Aslanyan

‘Shall I apologize translation?’ John Florio once said; or, in modern parlance, 'Happy International Translation Day!'

An old bike being secretly eyed up by a much younger bike.

Sometimes a St George’s Cross is just a St George’s Cross.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb. No surprise there.

Can't wait for #ITD2025? Start celebrating a week early. Join us on 23 September, 6–8pm for an online workshop. Chaired by me, it will focus on translating nonfiction. Bring your projects so we can discuss them together. Book your tickets here: englishpen.beaconforms.com/form/4b438226

On censorship, self-censorship, inept jingoists and inventive publishers www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Russia has also declared war on literature. Look at what’s happening and be warned | Anna Aslanyan

Anna Aslanyan on linguistic relativity, creative freedom and the translator's (in)visibility

While anglophone blurbs tend to end, rather boringly, with 'A masterpiece' or 'A joy to read', the Korean publishing industry, helped by AI, raises the game to another level. 'A bull's step', 'A clean sheet of rice', 'Spreading out the drum' – truly unputdownable! www.mk.co.kr/en/culture/1...

"There are Joycean passages that speak of lust and ‘love, in all herhis manifold guises’." Anna Aslanyan on Anthony Burgess’s novels set in Soviet and Shakespearean times

Thank you to the amazing @anna-aslanyan.bsky.social for her brilliant History Cycle Ride yesterday, ably helped by colleagues from Hackney Cycling Campaign - we learnt so much! #hackney #cycling #london #history @hackneylcc.bsky.social

'In the Narrator’s memory, Fanny swings wildly between euphoria (“I know it sounds crazy, but I’m happy!”) and darkness.' Anna Aslanyan: A man pieces together the life of his dead friend

To do justice to the book's humour, I ended my review with a joke about book reviewing.

'The business is good – except when, every month or so, his late father crawls into his throat and stays there for three days, croaking loudly enough for Franz to hear.' Anna Aslanyan: A former minister and his father share a voice

Out with Seagull Books in October press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Hackney LOVES cycling. Come join a HCC History Cycle: A bike tour of Hackney, a part of the Hackney History Festival. Register: www.tickettailor.com/checkout/vie... Cost: £5 (all proceeds will go to Pedro Youth Club's cycling projects) 📆 Sun 18 May; 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM 📍NE corner of Hackney Downs

Anna Aslanyan: Lord Haw-Haw's ‘fatuously untrue’ broadcasts

To the curator of this receipt art collection, here's my £6.66 worth.

Still a few tickets left. Book while the weather holds. www.google.com/maps/d/edit?...

Sunday 18 May, 5pm-7pm, from Hackney Downs Park to Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, with plenty to see along the way. Inspired by the Pickwick Bicycle Club, supported by @hackneylcc.bsky.social, guided by me www.google.com/maps/d/edit?...

Londoners! Join me for a history bike tour of Hackney. We'll start at Hackney Downs, the birthplace of the world's oldest cycling club, and finish at Dalston Lane, the site of a famous mural. Sunday 18 May, 5pm-7pm. Tickets and route map: www.tickettailor.com/events/hackn...

The short story and the puff piece are clearly by the same author. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

The Queen: ‘Well, aren’t you all holy serious?’ www.seagullbooks.org/comedies/

‘The sky is bluer, the black is blacker’ here.

‘Stanley Schtinter’s appearance in the opening sequence was nothing to do with the “death of the author” and everything to do with the production being “less low-budget than anti-budget”.’ Anna Aslanyan watches ‘Schneewittchen’ at the BFI: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...

"Amos’s well-researched, insightful book portrays a nation sweeping its past under the carpet" - another kind review for 'Russia Starts Here', this time by Anna Aslanyan in the Spectator: www.spectator.co.uk/article/mode...

The premiere of Schneewittchen, an experimental film shot on 35mm, directed by Stanley Schtinter and written by Robert Walser (translated by James Reidel and Daniele Pantano), began with the ghost of Walser in the snow and ended with the ghosts of the director and cast on the stage.

'Di Martino’s imaginative translations refract the light of the originals at unexpected angles.' Anna Aslanyan on a triumphant new translation of a Romanesco dialect poet

Translators are harder to impress than nontranslators. Damion Searls gives examples of that in The Philosophy of Translation; I, in my @thetls.bsky.social review of it. www.the-tls.co.uk/languages-ll...

I reviewed Day Lasts Forever by Mario dell’Arco, translated by Marc Alan di Martino, for @thetls.bsky.social. Come for Romanesco poetry, stay for all things Rome: cats, hustlers, emperors and more. www.the-tls.co.uk/literature/p...

I reviewed The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan by Domenico Starnone, translated by Oonagh Stransky, for @thetls.bsky.social. My favourite Neapolitan word in it is 'vafanculostrunznunmeromperpcàzz'. www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-feat...

London's got a new puzzle. Answers on a can, please.

The State of Things & Other Stories by Ilya Leutin was a joy to translate. An attentive reader will find more animals inside. paperand.ink/project/the-...