Extreme nerd request! #HistSky #HistorySky #BookSky I'm looking for non-fiction (or contemporaneous fiction) on bureaucratic changes that followed the end of the Austto-Hungarian empire. Like, how did newly independent countries set up state functions in new languages w/in newly defined borders?

Just took my glasses off to fish something out of my eye and then had to put on an old pair of glasses from a drawer in order to find where I'd put the original ones. I should not be left unsupervised.

Nominations for the 2026 Dublin Literary Award include BLURRED by Iris Wolff, alongside a lot of other very very good books: www.dublincityofliterature.ie/news/2026-du...

The wooden skeleton permanently affixed to a neighbour's side gate is wearing its crocheted poppy again. No "lest we forget" sash and beret this year though, which is disappointing #TodayInTheBay

A scene from just now to counter last night's shenanigans: low tide, dark clouds, detectorists out on the mud with the gulls and oystercatchers. For a minute, the sun breaks through to create the improbable image of a bloke digging for metal near the end of a rainbow. #TodayInTheBay

This evening I was planning to go out and do some anti-racist protesting then come home for a pasta bake - but three hours later we were being kettled for our own safety while the Flag People threw eggs at us. It's a bit scary out there.

Announcing the longlist for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2025! Featuring 10 languages, 12 publishers, 4 collections of poetry - and much more. The longlist travels from Argentina to South Korea, from Haiti to Romania, from Sweden to Slovenia. tinyurl.com/4cu8sdv9

Stayed here for our wedding anniversary a few years ago. The weather was foul, the landlady was very grumpy, it was the perfect Dartmoor experience.

Dear AI book-marketing spammer, You're right, The Coral Merchant does deserve more readers - but I regret to inform you that Mr Roth has been dead since 1939 and is unlikely to respond to your cheery, "Hi Joseph!" At least this one made me laugh.

Retranslation dilemma: several existing translations of a text from 1894 ask, "Is man a spiritually free being?" (The latest, from 1986, adds a translator's footnote saying sorry about the "man" thing, we don't have a gender-neutral option in English, try to ignore it). 1/2

Next Thurs, I'll be talking to co-translators @cctranslates.bsky.social and @dances-with-voles.bsky.social as part of the @societyofauthors.bsky.social #SoAatHome events. We'll be talking translation & celebrating the release of their co-translation of Nino Haratischwili's "The Lack of Light".

Quiet reading evening at the bookshop. Tea, snacks, comfy chairs, bit of a chat afterwards about what we're reading and life in general. More of this sort of thing!

Great review of BLURRED in the TLS! www.the-tls.com/literature/f...

The care home where my mum lives has the most alarming image when you look it up on Google maps. It's from when the animal man came in, but it really requires some context

More Iris Wolff... this time brilliantly interviewed (in English) by Georgina Godwin on Monocle Radio monocle.com/radio/shows/...

A lovely review of Iris Wolff's BLURRED, among other things, in @john-self.bsky.social 's latest roundup of translated fiction: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

British-born writer Jacinta Nandi is one of 20 authors long-listed for this year's German Book Prize for her novel 'Single Mom Supper Club'. The German Book Prize will be presented on 13 October. More on the long-listed books: www.new-books-in-german.com/german-book-...

If only there weren't so many rhyming poems in this translation. If only I had read the whole thing rather than just the first ten pages before agreeing to it. You might think well, you live and learn, but this is *not the first time I have been in this situation*. Idiot.

Kent people! I'll be talking about translation at Herne Bay's fabulous Little Green Bookshop on 30 Sept (International Translation Day) - join me... www.thelittlegreenbookshop.com/event-detail...

This was my first book read for #WomeninTranslation month 2025-an excellent, moving, family novel set in Iran and Germany, told in different voices: peakreads.wordpress.com/2025/08/08/t...

Back in Boppard am Rhein (Truro's twin town) for the first time since the school German exchange in 1993. It's delightful, and all the better for not having spent 2 days travelling from Cornwall by coach.

Our attempt to take books to the Oxfam shop was just thwarted by a huge thunderstorm - though I did give away one novel to the Dutch family sheltering with us in a slowly flooding multistorey carpark (Dorst by Esther Gerritsen). Weird afternoon.

Writers! Note that AI translation (under the guise of "global access") is being seen/used as the weak point to get AI into publishing (possible bc Eng lang publishing is weak on translation). Stand with translators & for more human translation, fairly paid!

Send a message to Kent County Council that you believe Trans+ books are not a danger to children and should be available in public libraries. Sign the open letter ✍️ 👇

I'm pretty bland online so don't attract a lot of hate - but in real life I get mercilessly trolled by next door's cat

Launched! And out in bookshops tomorrow - please read this beautiful meditation on migration, home, what it means to leave and to stay. uk.bookshop.org/p/books/blur...

Tonight in Margate!

This beautiful novel, located between Iran and Germany, came out in the UK last week. 'The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran' ... what savagely ironic timing. Look at this gorgeous writing by author Shida Bazyar and translator Ruth Martin @dances-with-voles.bsky.social. Please read it. shorturl.at/P0tz8

Something to keep in mind this Independent Bookshop Week (courtesy of the Little Green Bookshop's third birthday celebration this afternoon)

If you are in London on 24 June, why not come to the Goethe-Institut for this: www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ve...

It is much more comfortable to edit than to draft a translation with a cat on you (fewer keystrokes, less movement). The cat appears to know this.

Anyone in Kent fancy joining me for this extremely silly thing? folkestoneharbourarm.co.uk/events/the-m...

If you are in London on 24 June, why not come to the Goethe-Institut for this: www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ve...

Tittlebat: a stickleback Now say all of that three times fast

BIG BOOK klaxon: this 725pp epic will be out in September, translated by @cctranslates.bsky.social and me. More info here: www.harpercollins.com/products/the...

Madonna changed her look so many times that I thought she was several different people and therefore being Madonna was a job. I have never been great at facial recognition.

The Merlin Bird ID app is so good: five minutes outside with a coffee, recording the local birds and finding out who is singing what, is a beautiful way to start the day. Collared doves are out in force here today, and great tits. Yesterday it was more sparrows and starlings.

At Waterstones in Canterbury, to see the wonderful Sarah Perry in a conversation that featured the beauty of physics, the importance of form in novels, and a big audience-prompted digression on Sherlock Holmes.

Australian pub day for this beauty (the UK has to wait until June, sorry) - reviewed here by @tonysreadinglist.bsky.social tonysreadinglist.wordpress.com/2025/04/29/t...

🏳️‍⚧️ NEW 🏳️‍⚧️ We believe the Supreme Court – which disgracefully refused to hear from trans people before its decision last week – has placed the UK in breach of its obligations under the Human Rights Act. So we’re readying a challenge – join us: goodlaw.social/xpme

Swedish speakers: is "to sell something for ten mice" (ie very cheaply) a real idiom? I really hope it is...

Just googled the song that's stuck in my head and discovered that the lyrics are in fact "oye, don't go yet" and not "vuole vongole". Sticking with my version though - perhaps he does want clams and that's why he's leaving? To get clams?

Canterbury has a new(ish) statue of Aphra Behn, who grew up here, by Christine Charlesworth. Isn't she lovely?

Translators have been the canaries in the AI coalmine for a couple of years now and we are already losing work to these systems. Having existing work used to train them without permission or compensation just adds insult to injury.

If anyone's in Leipzig this weekend you should go and see Ursula Knoll reading tomorrow night, she's very good indeed www.editionatelier.at/events/leipz...

New book! Sunshine! Italian lemons!

Today's schedule said Start Difficult Project, so obviously I'm doing all my admin and writing a talk and updating my website instead. Never been so motivated.

Shout out for Susanne Deneke, who taught German at Truro College and in 1996 convinced me that I could actually read a book in another language. Wouldn't have got here without Frau Deneke! #ShoutOutForGerman

First pigeon of London Book Fair

There's a Feltrinelli bookshop most of the way up Mont Blanc at 3466 metres, officially the highest bookshop in Europe. Not a bad place to work, I imagine.