Editor’s note: Recently in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Točak—a weekly arts program on the Bosnian national television channel BHTV—dedicated an entire program to the work of Karim Zaimović, a young artist and writer killed during the siege of Sarajevo. One of Zaimović’s stories was the inspiration for a comic published in Massachusetts Review 55.3. What follows below . . .
Read MoreMassachusetts Review: First of all, congratulations on winning the 2013 Jules Chametzky Translation Prize for your work on Anna Piwkowska’s poem, “A letter from Paul Éluard to his wife who is in Cadaqués with Salvador Dali”! Iza Wojciechowska: Thank you! I was delighted when I found out. MR: You certainly deserve it. . . .
Read MoreAn Interview with Ju-Chan and Bruce Fulton Congratulations for having your translation of Kim Tae-yong’s “Pig on Grass” selected for publication in the Massachusetts Review and then for winning the 4th Annual Chametzky Prize for Translation! How did you celebrate?We were beside ourselves with joy and had a glass or two of wine, then forwarded the . . .
Read MoreA Teacher and a Rabbi in Conversation (Parts One; Two; Three) Ilan Stavans: I became a teacher by default, Justin. I wanted to be next to books. What better way to spend one’s life is there? Almost three decades after that decision, I believe it was teaching that chose me and not . . .
Read MoreA Teacher and a Rabbi in Conversation (Link to Part One)(Link to Part Two) Ilan Stavans: You read the biblical stories, it seems to me, to prove a higher morality; I, instead, see them as just stories. They are like Greek mythology: a constellation of characters doing human things in order to . . .
Read MoreA Teacher and a Rabbi in Conversation (Link to Part One) Ilan Stavans: I’ve often been asked if I believe in God. You know, Justin, I confess to keep changing my mind, not because I don’t believe in God—do I, really?—but because I like counting the various options my mind is able . . .
Read MoreA Teacher and a Rabbi in Conversation Rabbi Justin David: In Paradise Lost (1667), John Milton says that “the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, and a hell from heaven.” I want to talk to you about a number of perhaps disparate themes: God’s place in . . .
Read MoreEditor’s note: The interview that follows was first published on September 25, 2014 in Oslobođenje, the leading daily in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina’s capital city. The translation is by Una Tanović. After the comic “The Secret of Nikola Tesla,” based on a short story by Karim Zaimović, was published in the Massachusetts Review, we spoke with its author . . .
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May 20, 2014 Dear Erri, First off, I should wish you a very happy birthday! A big day… and, of course, there’s another one looming, just around the corner. I really wish I were in Italy now, so that I could participate more directly and stand together with everyone across the . . .
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Part OnePart Four V. On Torture Warrants and Kill Courts Jim Hicks: We can’t end this conversation without saying something about how Friel ends his book. The gesture of Dershowitz towards the authorization of torture courts is a way to get this discussion, he says, out into the open. The labeling of . . .
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