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01 July 2024

Premio Strega 2024: behind the scenes

This year, I have been nominated as a judge for the Premio Strega 2024, Italy’s most prestigious literary prize. I had just over six weeks to read the dozzina, the best 12 books published in Italy in the past year, and help choose the winner.

12 books nominated for this year's Premio Strega Prize (Image from https://www.illibraio.it/)

On April 15, I received the link to download the books and felt immediately overwhelmed by the task. First to attract my attention was Valentina Mira, partly for the semi-homonymy with yours truly, but also because her both personal and political story Dalla stessa parte mi troverai had been accused of revisionism.

Personal, almost biographical narratives feature heavily in this year’s dozzina. Melissa Panarello in Storia dei miei solid, mixes the story of her early literary fame with women’s taboo relation with money. Tommaso Giartosio astonishes with Autobiogrammatica, a bildungsroman and memoir about his relationship with language and a tribute to the 1963 Premio Strega winner, Natalia Ginzburg’s Lessico Famigliare (first Italian edition at 10765.k.23., English translation, Family Sayings, YC.1987.a.5661). The most personal and brave of all is Antonella Lattanzi, who in Cose che non si raccontano tells her cruel story of missed maternity with unapologetic honesty; a cathartic act to raise awareness in hope to help all women. I hope this book will be translated into English very soon.

Part family history, part essay, Daniele Rielli’s Il fuoco invisibile. Storia umana di un disastro naturale is a blend of many genres. It is a choral novel with Puglia’s millenary olive trees threatened by the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa as its protagonists.

Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s L’età fragile is the favourite for this year. Like her last success, L’Arminuta, 2017 (first Italian edition at YF.2019.a.15048, English translation by Ann Goldstein, A Girl Returned, at ELD.DS.428465), this book talks about the relationship between mother and daughter and is set in her native region of Abruzzo, in a very rural environment which is echoed by her dry and simple writing style.

These works give a fantastic overview of the state of the art of Italian narrative and of the literary genres that evolve and intermix. They show an ageing country deeply affected by climate change, with younger generations abandoning the province and women and LGBTQ+ people fighting for their rights and their freedom. They tell of strong ancestral bonds and a passion for the Italian language and culture.

The winner will be announced on July 4, chosen by 700 jurors, 245 of which were nominated by the Italian Cultural Institutes worldwide for their interest in Italian language and literature.

Premio Strega was established in 1947, and among its winners are some of the best-known works of contemporary literature, such as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) (1959) and Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose) (1981). Awarded authors include Cesare Pavese (1950), Alberto Moravia (1952), Elsa Morante (1957), Alessandro Barbero (1986), Antonio Pennacchi (2010), and Sandro Veronesi (2020).

Valentina Mirabella, Curator, Romance Collections

Posted by European Studies at 11:19 AM

Tags

Italy, Literature, Romance languages, Translation

26 June 2024

EURO 2024: The Dutch Legion takes over Hamburg

The UEFA European Championships 2024 are underway. The men’s football teams of 24 countries are battling it out for the trophy on various pitches in Germany.

I personally wished there was a trophy for most imaginative football fans. The ‘Dutch Legion’, the nickname for the Dutch Football fans, would have a good chance of winning it. Belying the reputation of the Dutch people for being level-headed, down-to-earth, and with an ‘act-normal-that’s-crazy-enough’ mentality, the Dutch Legion go full ‘Orange Fever’ (a term that seems to have disappeared) by dressing up in crazy costumes in bright orange, with even crazier accessories, usually some sort of head gear, all in orange, with sometimes a smidgen of red, white and blue. They come in their tens of thousands, especially now that the tournament is held so close to the Netherlands. as anyone who watched them marched through Hamburg before their first match against Poland on 16 June will be able to testify. It was their 50th march, so a special event in any case. The English language online newspaper NL Times posted some videos.

Dutch football fans demonstrating their devotion to the colour orange (Photograph from Pinterest)

Why the colour orange? The Dutch flag is red, white and blue, so what’s the ‘Oranje’ doing there? The orange refers to the Dutch Royal family, whose name is Van Oranje-Nassau.

The Nassaus are an old aristocratic family from Germany. The foundations of the family go back to 1403, but it was in 1544 that Rene van Chalon, ruler over the princedom of Orange in France and son of Early Henry III and Claudia of Chalon dies and leaves all his possessions to his nephew William of Orange (1533-1584). William became the founding father of the Oranje-Nassau dynasty. I wonder what William would have made of the Dutch Legion.

William of Orange, from Levinus Ferdinand de Beaufort, Het Leven van Willem de I., Prins van Oranje ... (Leiden, 1732) 1199.f.6-8.

I wrote a blog post about the phenomenon of Dutch fandom four years ago. Meanwhile Ronald Koeman’s Orange Team have reached the next stage, so the Dutch Legion will be out in full force for the next week at least. You can’t miss them. Meanwhile, as you wait for their next match, you can browse through some suggested reading on Dutch (and Belgian) football and footballers from our collections below.

Marja Kingma, Curator Germanic Collections

Miracles and Fairy Tales: some German Football Stories

It’s generally acknowledged that success in major sporting events can boost a nation’s morale, and that even those uninterested in the sport itself may on such occasions be carried along by the enthusiasm of their sport-loving fellow citizens. One such footballing event in 1950s West Germany was the final of the 1954 World Cup tournament, played in neighbouring Switzerland.

This match has gone down in German history as ‘das Wunder von Bern’ (‘the miracle of Bern’) because it saw underdogs West Germany defeat the favourites Hungary. As described in a previous post the Hungarians were at the top of their game in the early 1950s and the final was theirs to win; after all, their ‘Golden Team’ had thrashed Germany 8-3 in the group stage of the tournament. As anticipated, they took an early lead, but Germany were unexpectedly quick to equalise and at half time the score was level at 2-2. With six minutes of the second half to go, German forward Helmut Rahn scored a third goal. A late Hungarian equaliser was ruled offside, and when the whistle blew, West Germany were World Cup winners.

Book cover with four black and white photographs from the 1954 World Cup final

Cover of Peter Kasza, 1954, Fussball spielt Geschichte: das Wunder von Bern (Bonn, 2004) SF.427 [Bd. 435]

For many in West Germany the win became symbolic not just of sporting success against the odds, but of a new sense of national identity and self-confidence. The Federal Republic was only five years old, and memories of the Nazi regime and the Second World War were still raw. The cup win offered something that Germans could be unconditionally and unproblematically proud of. Writers and historians have described it as a kind of rebirth for a country still grappling with its recent past. It was also the beginning of the West Germany’s rise to be a major footballing nation.,

The 2003 film Das Wunder von Bern, by life-long football fan Sönke Wortmann, dramatises these themes on a personal level through the fictional story of Richard, a former prisoner of war returning from a decade in Soviet captivity and trying to find his place again both in his family and in a very different Germany. A last-minute trip to the cup final with his 11-year old son Matthias, who idolises Helmut Rahn but has a difficult relationship with the long-absent and traumatised Richard, becomes a turning-point for Richard’s reconciliation with his family and his country.

Film poster for Das Wunder von Bern with an image of a young boy and a smaller picture of him and his father playing football on a piece of waste ground

Poster for the 2003 film Das Wunder von Bern

It has been suggested that the significance of the ‘miracle of Bern’ as a turning-point for the nation as a whole has been overemphasised and mythologised, and no doubt films such as Wortmann’s help to feed that mythology. But it was definitely a fillip for the young Federal Republic, just as the ‘Sommermärchen’ (‘Summer Fairy Tale’) of the 2006 World Cup was would be for a reunified Germany 52 years later, when the country hosted the tournament.

Germany didn’t win in 2006, being knocked out in the semi-finals by eventual victors Italy (although they defeated Portugal in the runners-up game to finish third). But the success of the event once again gave Germans a sense of national pride, and helped to normalise the waving of the German flag and wearing of its colours to reflect this, something regarded with more wariness in previous decades. Sönke Wortmann also made a film about this World Cup, this time a documentary, Deutschland, ein Sommermärchen. Like Das Wunder von Bern three years before, this enjoyed huge success.

Cover of 'Deutschland, ein Sommermaerchen' with colour photographs of footballers celebrating and a footballer lying on the grass taking a photograph

Cover of Sönke Wortmann & Christoph Biermann, Deutschland, ein Sommermärchen: ein WM-Tagebuch (Cologne, 2006) YF.2008.a.38179

Germany’s triumph in another World Cup in Brazil in 2014, although not such a watershed moment as 1954 or 2006, was rapturously received at home. The final had the nation gripped, with impromptu ‘public viewings’ set up outside houses and shops.

A group of people sitting on a street and watching a football match on a television that has been set up outside a shop

A ‘public viewing’ of the 2014 World Cup final on a Munich street (photograph: Susan Reed)

As Germany hosts this year’s European Championships, feelings are a bit more muted as political divisions and the rise of right-wing parties make flag-waving seem more problematic for some. But so far fans have been enjoying the atmosphere, and the fact that a Bhangra-inspired song by ‘Lovely & Monty’, two Sikh taxi drivers from Hamburg, who perform in their video draped in the national colours, has become a viral hit, suggests that Euro 2024 can showcase a diverse and modern Germany.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

Ukraine: A Life in Football

The history of Ukrainian football starts with the establishment of the Odesa British Athletic Club in 1878 by British workers of the Indo-European Telegraph Company. For a number of years, the club functioned as exclusively British. According to the archival documents, the first Odessites – Piotrovskii and Kryzhnovskii, and later a well-known aviator and athlete Sergei Utochkin – joined the club only in 1899. Artem Frankov, a Ukrainian sports journalist, believes that amateur footballers in Odesa actively played outside the official OBAC structure, but the participation of Ukrainians had not been recorded. The first big match, however, was reported in the local press (Odesskii Vestnik).

Lviv became the official birthplace of Ukrainian football. In 1892, with active support from Archduke Franz Ferdinand, it became an integral part of annual fairs aiming to demonstrate achievements in economic and social life. On 17 July 1894, Gazeta Lwowska, in an article about the fair, tried to explain this gymnastic activity as a game where players bounce a ball with their feet.

Screenshot of an article on football in Gazeta Lwowska (Image from https://jbc.bj.uj.edu.pl/dlibra/publication/22161)

The article focuses on the ‘Sokol’ rally, or demonstration of sports competencies by members of a newly formed athletic society. Vasyl’ Nahirnyi, a Ukrainian Galician architect and public figure, was its founder and head, while another educator, publisher, and promoter of sports in Galicia, Volodymyr Lavrivs’kyi, published the first rules of the game in Ukrainian.

It was probably at that time that the term ‘kopanyi m’iach’ started being used to name this game. Abbreviated as ‘kopanka’ (the stress is on the first syllable) – a kicked ball – the term existed in Galicia until the end of the Second World War but never spread to other Ukrainian lands and did not enter the Ukrainian literary language. In a scholarly article on Ukrainian national football terminology of the late 19th and early 20th century, Iryna Protsyk of the National University ‘Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’ comes to the conclusion that “Despite the fact that Ukrainian system of football terminology during the investigated period was in the process of formation, there was certain domination of national football terminology over foreign terms: 75 per cent football names themselves, 23 per cent – loanwords from different languages and 2 per cent hybrid special names.”

Page from Volodymyr Lavrivs’kyi's Kopana

School students started playing football in Uzhhorod (Zakarpattia) in 1893, and the first official match took place on 15 August 1901. The game attracted an audience of 1,000 spectators – a significant part of the town’s population of 14,000 people. The local team lost 0 : 3 to one of the strongest Hungarian teams, the Buda Athletic Club.

Historians think that Czech workers from the machine factory Grether and Kryvanek in Kyiv introduced local workers to football. The first games were recorded on a football pitch opposite the factory in 1900, at present – a site of the National Cinema Studio of feature films named after Oleksandr Dovzhenko.

It is not surprising that football remains popular in today’s Ukraine. Not only is it widely played, but it also is the subject of academic research. The Geographical Faculty of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv offers a course in the History and Geography of Football.

Even if one is not big on football, it is impossible not to have heard about Valeriy Lobanovskyi (1939-2002), Oleh Blokhin (b. 1952), Ihor Bielanov (b. 1960) and Andriy Shevchenko (b. 1976). All three prominent Ukrainian footballers, at various points trained by Lobanovs’kyi, were honoured with the Ballon d'Or (the Golden Ball), the most prestigious and valuable individual award in football.

Cover of Futbol po-ukrainski by A. Frankov (Kharkiv, 2006) YF.2008.a.10294

In preparing this blog, I have been searching the catalogue for footballers’ memoirs. Unfortunately, our holdings in this area are not strong, and it would be good if we could cover these gaps retrospectively.

Cover of My Life, My Football by Andriy Shevchenko and Alessandro Alciato translated from Italian by Mark Palmer (Glasgow, 2023). Awaiting legal deposit copy

Having said that, I have made an interesting discovery. For the Euro 2012 Championship, Ukrainian writers published a collection Pys'mennyky pro futbol, with contributions from Serhiy Zhadan, Yurii Andrukhovych, Yuriy Vynnychuk and Artem Chekh, among others.

Cover of Pys'mennyky pro futbol (Kharkiv, 2011) YF.2012.a.9453

Artem Chekh joined the Ukrainian army at the beginning of the war in 2015. When the full-scale invasion began, he went back to the front line. Several weeks ago, we learned that Serhiy Zhadan also joined ZSU.

Stories of Ukrainian footballers after a year of war were published in the Guardian in February 2023: ‘The military call and I deliver’: voices from Ukraine's football after a year of war’. A list of names of coaches, players and referees who are still fighting and those who have tragically lost their lives in this war can be found here.

Despite the ongoing war, the Ukrainian national football team is taking part in Euro-2024. They will play Romania on Monday 17, Slovakia on Friday 21, and Belgium on Wednesday the 26. We wish them only beautiful goals and the best of luck!

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator, East European Collections

Can you learn to play football from a book?

With the Euro 24 football championships kicking off tonight, here is the first in a series of blog posts about the beautiful game as reflected in our European collections. Our first post looks at Hungary’s glory days in the 1950s.

Can you learn to play football from a book? Apparently so, or at least attempts were made in the distant past, like with the 1954 hidden gem entitled Learn to Play the Hungarian Way: a Soccer Manual for Young Footballers Showing the Methods Used by the Hungarian Champions.

The title page of Bukovi & Csaknády’s Learn to Play the Hungarian Way (Budapest, 1954) 7919.bb.56.

What may sound even more surprising for some, in this slim volume Hungarians set out to teach the English-speaking world the tricks of the game. Others may of course be fully aware that 70 years ago Hungarian football was really a phenomenon to take notice of, the national side having won gold at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. The next year they defeated England 6:3 at Wembley in the ‘Match of the Century’ and 7:1 in Budapest in 1954. Although favourites for the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland, Hungary came second behind West Germany there, but only after convincingly beating the likes of Brazil and Uruguay on their way to the final. Such a series of major football successes and their heroes like Puskás must have been hugely inspirational for the Hungarian people in so many ways, especially during the bleakest Communist period of the fifties.

Full time at the Hungary v England on 23 May 1954 in Budapest. Image by FORTEPAN via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Against this backdrop, the book was written by two coaches and, like the original, its English translation was also published in Budapest. It explains all the elements of the Hungarian game style from the various types of kicks through ball control, feints and tackles to shots and headers, not leaving out goalkeeping either. Tactics occupy a separate chapter, while sample training schedules to help reach one’s optimal fitness level are offered at the end.

The game has obviously developed and changed a lot since then, so perhaps not many young footballers would want to learn to play competitively from this book nowadays, but contemporaneous works like it certainly give researchers and interested fans a historical perspective by recording different stages of and some notable contributions to that development.

Demonstrating the skills in the photographs throughout the book are members of the ‘Golden Team’ itself.

When ‘diving’ in football was more innocent: the ‘pike dive’ illustrated in Learn to Play the Hungarian Way

The introduction was penned by Jimmy Hogan, who, before ending his career at Aston Villa just as the Second World War began, had managed a wide range of European clubs, including MTK Budapest from 1914-1921 and again from 1925-1927. So it all came full circle: an English coach instilling his advanced methods in Hungary and decades later the Hungarians teaching others!

From the 1970s, football in Hungary went into a long and painful decline, but recent signs of improvement have been giving cautious glimmers of hope again, including now at the 2024 Euros. Who knows, maybe this time…?

In the British Library’s Hungarian Collections we hold many other football-related items, just two quick examples here:

Covers of Iván Hegyi, Magyarok nagy pályán : a labdarúgás legendái (Budapest, 2015) YF.2016.b.2107 and László Hetyei, Magyarok a labdarúgó Európa-bajnokságokon (Budapest, 2016) YF.2017.a.16160

Ildi Wollner, Curator, Central/East European Collections

Posted by European Studies at 2:49 PM

Tags

Hungary, Popular culture, Slavonic

05 June 2024

Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages 2024

The annual Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages will take place on Friday 28 June 2024 in the Foyle Room, Conservation Centre at The British Library. The programme is as follows:

11.00 Registration and coffee

11.30 Juan Gomis (Valencia). Visual recognition tools for the study of Spanish chapbooks, 18th and 19th centuries

12.25 Lunch (own arrangements)

13.30 Karima Gaci (Leeds). French grammar textbooks published in England, 18th and 19th centuries

14.15 Yuri Cerqueira dos Anjos (Wellington). French writing manuals in the 19th century

15.00 Tea

15.30 Alexandra Wingate (Indiana). Reviewing the systems approach: a general model for book and information circulation

16.15 Sarah Pipkin (London). Two works by Kepler in University College London, De stella nova (1606) and De cometis libri tres (1619), and their provenance

Attendance is free, but please register by emailing Barry Taylor ([email protected]) or Susan Reed ([email protected])

Black and white illustration of a printing shop with two presses and four printers at work

An eighteenth century French printing shop from A. Picaud, La Veille de la Révolution (Paris, 1886) 9225.l.12.

Posted by European Studies at 10:00 AM

Tags

France, Germany, Printed books, Publishing and printing, Spain

29 May 2024

Preservation of Roma historical and cultural heritage in Bulgaria

Two Endangered Archives Programme projects, one in 2007 and the other in 2009, aimed to digitise collections of material associated with the community and cultural activities of the Roma in Bulgaria during the 20th century. Over 2000 items have been digitised and relocated to the Studii Romani Archive at the Ethnographical Institute and Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Digital copies have been preserved in both the Studii Romani Archive and the British Library.

Page from a 1927 issue of the newspaper Svetilnik with Romani text in Cyrillic type

Digital image from a 1927 issue of Svetilnik (‘Candelabra’). The newspaper is written in both Bulgarian (pages one to three) and Romani (page four displayed above). EAP067/6/1.

Svetilnik was one of the first evangelical newspapers written for a Romani audience. It was published by the Baptist Roma Mission during the 1920s. Other Roma newsletters and pamphlets were printed during the 1920s, some of them also associated with evangelical missions, while others focused on community life. Many copies of these newspapers and booklets have vanished over time, but some issues are preserved in private collections. Throughout the communist era, copies of certain newspapers were archived in public library collections. After 1989 some archival materials became accessible to the public, while others were destroyed, including some with significant historical or cultural value, such as Roma newsletters and pamphlets.

Romano Esi (‘Roma’s voice’) EAP067/7/1/1.

The newspaper Romano Esi was originally published from 1946 to 1948. It was published by the All Cultural and Educational Organization for Roma Minorities in Bulgaria. The title of each issue is in Romani, while the content of the newspapers is in Bulgarian.

Black and white group photograph of circus workers and performers outside the Cirkus Kozarov tent

Circus ‘Kozarov’ where Roma musicians from the Zhivkov family worked as musicians, c1930. EAP067/2/1/1.

The collection also includes digital images of original documents pertaining to prominent families and community members, as well as photographs depicting various aspects of family life, such as group and individual portraits, weddings, and images from everyday life. It also encompasses celebrations of common feasts, family gatherings, excursions, holidays, as well as the political and social activities of community members. Additionally, it features theatre posters.

Black and white photograph of Saban Bajramovic singing, accompanied by a violinist, accordionist and guitarist, with a small girl dancing in the foreground

Saban Bajramovic, known as the ‘King of Gypsy music’ hailing from Niš, a city in Serbia, pictured at a wedding in the Fakulteta neighbourhood of Sofia during the 1970s. EAP285/7/11.

The folklore collection comprises songs, fairy tales, short stories and ritual songs of nomads created during the 20th century. These expressions convey the hopes for a better life and the faith of Roma people in ‘the bright future of communism,’ a belief they held.

Poster for the Central Gypsy Theatre ‘Roma’ with photographs of performances. Red and black type and black and while photographs against a pink background.

Poster for the Central Gypsy Theatre ‘Roma’ promoting a musical performance titled Rapsodia (‘Rhapsody’). EAP067/1/5/2.

Page of Cyrillic manuscript on squared paper in a spiral-bound notebook

Notes detailing the establishment and history of the Roma quarter in Montana (Mikhailovgrad) in the 1970s. EAP285/9/1.

The illustration above is from a notebook covering topics from everyday life, Roma customs, and holidays. Additionally, it includes various short folklore genres like proverbs and humorous narratives. The original notebook is well preserved and consists of 88 handwritten pages.

Page of typescript with handwritten corrections in blue ink

Typescript of a work on the origins of the Roma, with manuscript corrections. EAP285/12/1.

Typescript of a poem with six four-line stanzas

One of two poems by Fikria Fazli, a female Romani activist from Sofia, addressing the plight of the Roma (1970s). EAP285/14/6.

The documents revealing the fruitful cooperation between the British linguist Donald Kenrick and Dimiter Golemanov, a Romani poet, translator and philologist, are very interesting and enlightening. Kenrick first encountered Golemanov during his second visit to Sliven around 1967. At that time, Golemanov was already recognized in the world of Gypsy studies, thanks to a version of the ‘Song of the Bridge’ published in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. Kenrick collected a variety of materials from Golemanov, ranging from traditional songs and tales to Golemanov’s own compositions and translations.

Letter in Romani language written in blue ink on lined paper

Letter dated 11 November 1969 from Golemanov to Kenrick with news from Sliven in Romani language. EAP285/11/1.

Manuscript letter in Russian, written in blue ink on lined paper with some verses and lines of music

Above: Letter in Russian from Golemanov to Kenrick, April 1969, EAP285/11/4. Below: A song in Romani, written and composed by Golemanov himself, sent as an accompaniment to the letter, EAP285/11/5.

Manuscript of music for a song, headed 'Legenda', in blue ink on lined paper

Below: Two pages from Golemanov’s translation of Alexander Pushkin's poem ‘The Gypsies’ into the Romani ‘drindari’ dialect of Sliven, which was his native language (1969), EAP285/11/8.

Translation of Pushkin's 'The Gypsies' into Romani, manuscript in blue ink on squared paper

Kenrick himself translated some of Golemanov’s work into English. The two pictures below are a translation of a fairy tale (1978), EAP285/11/15 and a song (1978), EAP285/11/14.

Typescript translation of a short fairy tale entitled 'Why man lives for eighty years'

Typescript of a song in Romani with the first two stanzas of an English translation

Milan Grba, Curator South-Eastern European Collections

References:

Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (Sandon, 1888-1999) Ac.9944.

Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov, The first Gypsy/Roma organisations, churches and newspapers, in From Dust to Digital: ten years of the Endangered Archives Programme (Cambridge, 2015), pp. [189]-224. ELD.DS.46613, and available online here.

Posted by European Studies at 10:00 AM

Tags

Bulgaria, Digitisation, History, Language, Slavonic

17 May 2024

Continental cookbooks

From 17 May to 3 June 2024, the British Library celebrates its sixth Food Season, with a range of events that highlight the stories, the politics, and the people behind how and why we eat. While practical in their intent, cookbooks offer fascinating insights into the time and place of their production. The British Library’s rich collection of cookbooks provides an engaging way to trace evolving attitudes and tastes that have shaped cuisines and cultures. To mark this year's food season, today’s blog features a selection of some of our favorite cookbooks within the European Collections at the British Library. Bon appetit!

Kuharske Bukve

The first cookbook in Slovene was printed in 1799 as “the beginning of the Slovene cuisine”. It was compiled and edited by Valentin Vodnik, a Slovene poet and journalist. He translated recipes mainly from a variety of German cookery writers and titled his book Kuharske Βukve (Cook Books).

Facsimile reprint of Valentin Vodnik’s 1799 work, Kuharske Βukve (Lublin, 1999) YF.2012.a.5. The original can be seen in the Slovene Digital Library.

The book comprises Vodnik’s introduction on healthy food and translations of 300 recipes arranged in 22 sections: soups; vegetable, meat and poultry dishes; sauces; egg and dairy dishes, fish and seafood dishes; cakes, drinks, etc. Each recipe has a title in Slovene culinary terminology.

This cookbook was printed at a time of important activities to further advance the Slovene language and was also significant for Slovene culinary practice. In his introduction Vodnik posed the questions: “Why would we steal words? Isn't the Slovenian language quite capable?” He stated the basic rules of healthy eating and asserted that “everything from which dishes are cooked must be healthy, and the cooking method must also be healthy”.

Frontispiece of Vodnik’s cookbook with the inscription “Good food for hungry people”

Selected by Milan Grba, Lead Curator of South-East European Collections

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History on Our Plate: Recipes from America’s Dutch Past for Today’s Cooks

In History on Our Plate, Peter G. Rose describes how some of today’s favourite American staples, such as coleslaw and cookies were introduced by Dutch settlers.

Cover of Peter G. Rose, History on Our Plate: Recipes from America’s Dutch Past for Today’s Cooks (Syracuse, 2019). YK.2021.a.586.

Rose takes inspiration from the earliest (anonymously) published cooking book in the Dutch language: De Verstandige Kock (‘The Sensible Cook’), which also includes De Hollandtse slacht-tydt (‘The Dutch Butchering time’) as well as De verstandige confituurmaker, (‘The Sensible Confectioner’). This highly rated book was often sent to Dutch settlers by their relatives back in the Netherlands.

The title page of De Verstandige Kock (Amsterdam: Marcus Doornick, 1669) 441.b.21.(7.)

Other sources he uses are manuscript (so unpublished) cooking books, written by American / Dutch women. Around 2011 a database was set up to digitise some of these handwritten recipe books, the ‘Manuscript Cookbooks Survey’. Now we can all try out centuries old Dutch /American recipes!

Selected by Marja Kingma, Curator of Dutch Language Collections

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Hodēgos mageirikēs kai zacharoplastikēs, aka Tselementes

Authored by chef Nikolaos Tselementes, the 1926 Hodēgos mageirikēs kai zacharoplastikēs was Greece’s first complete cookery book that triggered the modernisation of Greek cuisine with the introduction of European components such as béchamel sauce. The book was so influential that the surname Tselementes is used as a synonym for a cookbook to the present day.

The cover of the 1976 edition Nikolaos Tselementes, Hodēgos mageirikēs kai zacharoplastikēs (Athens, 1976) X.622/2509.

Despite its revolutionising elements, the book reflected the reality of what was still a male-dominated Greek society. In its first few pages, it featured the ‘Decalogue to the Ladies’, an outdated and anti-feminist text written by Carmen Sylva (real name Elisabeth of Wied, first Queen of Romania), which urges the woman - housewife to serve only as ‘queen’ in the kitchen, act as servant to her husband, and be obliged always to agree with, obey, flatter him and, above all, respect his mother whom he had loved first!

The ‘Decalogue to the Ladies’ at the start of Tselementes’s cookbook from the 1976 edition.

Selected by Lydia Georgiadou, Curator of Modern Greek Collections

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La cucina futurista

Here is a cookbook you can’t live without. Marinetti’s 1932 Futurist Cookbook challenges the perception of Italian cuisine: everything is subverted, from the order of the courses to the scandalous rejection of pasta. The recipes suggested were actually prepared during ‘futurist’ banquets, gatherings resembling performance art where everything, from the crockery to the sound, was created on purpose. Despite being a satirical work, the application of modern science and technology to gastronomy suggested in the book (ozone generators, UV lamps, nutrient-dense powders) is an innovative element that anticipates today’s molecular cuisine. What never changes is the pleasure of hosting and sitting at the table, sharing a meal and enjoying conviviality.

The cover of F.T. Marinetti and Fillìa, La cucina futurista (Italy, 1932) Cup.408.ww.45.

Selected by Valentina Mirabella, Curator of Romance Collections

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Forbidden cuisine: a book about delicious prison food

Lapitsiĭ is a pen name of Andrey Sannikov, a Belarusian oppositionist and a champion of human rights, who stepped into the arena of the 2010 presidential elections, challenging the entrenched power of Alexander Lukashenko. The aftermath of that fateful election was nothing short of a whirlwind: Sannikov found himself imprisoned, a captive of his convictions, after taking part in a demonstration organised by the opposition. The walls closed in, and for 16 months, his voice was silenced, but his spirit remained unbroken.

Cover of Zapreshchennaia kukhnia: Kniga o vkusnoĭ tiuremnoĭ pishche (Warsaw, 2023) YF.2023.a.24545

In the depths of captivity, Sannikov grappled with the stark reality of losing more than just his physical freedom. The very act of choosing what to eat — a simple, everyday privilege — was dictated by others. Hunger became a harsh reminder of his constrained existence, a tool used to bend the will of the incarcerated. Food, often bland and scarce, became a canvas for creativity. In the face of deprivation, inmates concocted imaginative variations of borscht, herring beneath a fur coat salad, and layered birthday cakes. For them, ‘cooking is a territory of freedom,’ a small triumph of choice and creativity amid confinement.

A prison cell with a table set for a meal, illustration from Zapreshchennaia kukhnia

And so emerged Zapreshchennaia kukhnia: Kniga o vkusnoĭ tiuremnoĭ pishche (‘Forbidden cuisine: a book about delicious prison food’) —a symbol of resilience and defiance. Beyond a mere meal, food became an act of rebellion, an assertion of their humanity. In these culinary creations, born out of necessity and ingenuity, lay the embodiment of the most imaginative and delicious declaration of independence.

Potato soup from Zapreshchennaia kukhnia.

Selected by Olga Topol, Curator of Slavonic and East European Collections

Posted by European Studies at 2:08 PM

Tags

Belarus, Germanic, Greece, Netherlands, Slavonic, Slovenia

14 May 2024

European prose in transformation (Part 2) The European Writers’ Festival returns to the British Library

30 established and emerging authors from across Europe gather under one roof to delve into the theme of ‘Transformation’ at the second European Writers’ Festival taking place over the weekend of 18-19 May 2024 at the British Library. Two days of performances and panels will discuss how storytelling, its creators, its original language as well as its translation, are changing as the continent itself is transforming. While writing about personal experience embedded in history remains central to European literature, the Festival’s guests attempt to break literary traditions and established boundaries, setting off for transformative new journeys – and carrying us with them. This is the second of two blog posts examining some of the themes of the Festival. (You can read the first here.)

Cover of The Postcard with a photograph of Noémie Rabinovitch, a budding writer who was murdered before she could fulfil her potential as her great-niece Anne (pictured right) has been able to do

Anne Berest, The Postcard - Sunday 19 May, Panel 1, ‘Transforming Historical Narratives’

Anne Berest is a French novelist and scriptwriter born in 1979. With her sister Claire, she is the author of Gabriële (Paris, 2017; YF. 2018.a.8864), a critically acclaimed biography of her great-grandmother, Gabriële Buffet-Picabia, wife of the painter Francis Picabia, highlighting her contribution to the French avant-garde. Gabriële and her daughter Jeanine, who both joined the French Resistance, feature in La carte postale (Paris, 2020; YF. 2022.a.8192) and Samuel Beckett makes an appearance too! Translated into English by Tina Kover as The Postcard, the book opens on a snowy morning in 2003 when Anne’s mother Lélia, receives an anonymous postcard inscribed with the names Ephraïm, Emma, Noémie and Jacques. The names are those of Anne’s great-grandparents and her great-aunt and uncle, the Rabinovitch family, all of whom died in Auschwitz. Anne’s grandmother, Myriam, escaped deportation and was her family’s sole survivor, but she never talked about the past. The book’s novelistic techniques (invented dialogue, omniscient narration) may initially seem questionable, but the book is based on Lélia’s meticulous research and Anne’s own investigations. Viewing the dreadful fate of European Jews deported from Vichy France under German occupation through the prism of named individuals that we get to know and care about makes for a compelling take on history and on what it is to be a Jew in France today as a third-generation survivor. And who wrote and sent that postcard? All is revealed on the last page.

Teresa Vernon, Lead Curator, Romance Collections

Cover of Niki and photograph of Christos Chomenidis (photograph by Kokkalias Nikos from the Other Press website)

Christos Chomenidis, Niki - Sunday 19 May, Panel 1, ‘Transforming Historical Narratives’

Through his 2014 novel Niki, author Christos Chomenidis narrates his real family adventures against the dramatic historical backdrop of 20th century Greece through the eyes of his mother, Niki. Daughter of the deputy secretary general of the Greek Communist Party Vassilis Nefeloudis (Antonis Armaos in the book), infant Niki will be swept up in turmoil when her parents are arrested: just 70 days old, she will join her mother in exile in the Cyclades; growing up, she will experience the Italian and German invasion, the Nazi occupation, and the civil war that came after, and will often be caught between her socialist values and those of the right-wing establishment, to which half her relatives belong; as a young woman, she will fall madly in love, giving the already divided family yet another reason to clash. “Niki’s life is the life of all children who come into the world with a heavy burden on their shoulders; they do not renounce it, but neither do they let it to bend them” says Chomenidis and continues: “The people of Niki are the History of 20th century Greece”.

Following his mother’s death in 2008, the author became the last of his line who knew all the protagonists’ stories and so, he decided to record them, initially in a letter for his own daughter (who was named Niki after her grandmother) and gradually into a novel, tackling complex events in a way that is simple and understandable even to readers who are not familiar with these aspects of Greek history.

Niki was awarded the Greek State Literature Prize in 2015 and the European Book Prize for Fiction in 2021. Its English translation by Patricia Felisa Barbeito is the featured book from Greece at the European Writers’ Festival 2.

Lydia Georgiadou, Curator, Modern Greek Collections

Cover of Journey to the South and photograph of Michal Ajvaz (photograph by Rafał Komorowski from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0)

Michal Ajvaz, Journey to the South – Sunday 19 May 2020, Panel 2, ‘Breaking Boundaries’

Michal Ajvaz, who studied Czech and Aesthetics at the Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University, worked during the normalisation period as a janitor, nightwatchman, and petrol pump attendant among other jobs. Ajvaz debuted in 1989 with the poetry collection Vražda v hotelu Intercontinental, (‘Murder at the Hotel Intercontinental’, Brno, 2012; YF.2013.a.7148) and has since authored over 20 works blending imaginative prose with philosophical essays.

Ajvaz’s literary influences trace back to his early readings of Edgar Allan Poe and E.T.A. Hoffmann. His exploration of magical realism began with Druhé město (Prague, 1993; YA.1995.a.26185. English translation by Gerald Turner: The Other City, Champaign, Dallas, 2009; YK.2010.a.31674), which stirred discussions on its role within Czech literature. Ajvaz’s works are filled with mirrored landscapes and parallel worlds, adventures and quests that span the world.

The Magnesia Litera award-winning novel Lucemburská zahrada (Brno 2011; YF.2012.a.2551), delves into linguistics with a newly invented language and takes the reader on a journey through Paris, Nice, Nantes, in the state of New York, Moscow, Santa Lucia, Sicilian Taormina and the invented city of Lara. The writer-philosopher's love of linguistics reached its peak in this work, resulting in an appendix offering a key to deciphering some of the novel's content.

The magic permeating Ajvaz’s literary worlds stems from his philosophy and writing process. This is how he describes it in an interview published on the literární.cz website:

Usually, it's just a feeling, often associated with a specific place... These feelings remind me of a white fog in which dozens of indistinct figures with their own stories flicker, and these characters and stories beckon me to free them from the fog, to give them some form. It's true that some ideas eventually make their way into my fiction books, but that's because from the initial feeling a certain world gradually unfolds with everything that belongs to it—and to the world belong not only characters, spaces, and plots but also ideas. However, ideas should not dominate the novel; they must not be privileged over the other inhabitants of the novel.

Now the British public has an opportunity to become immersed in Ajvaz’s world and walk alongside the characters of Journey to the South, translated to English last year by Andrew Oakland (Dallas, 2023). Pack your imagination and join the fellow travellers!

Olga Topol, Curator, Slavonic and East European Curator

Cover of Home and photograph of Andrea Tompa (Photograph by Petőfi Literary Fund via Hungarian Literature Online)

Andrea Tompa, Home – Sunday 19 May 2024, Panel 3, ‘Europe on the Move’

Thirty years after relocating from Cluj-Napoca to Budapest in 1990, Hungarian writer and theatre critic Andrea Tompa felt the time was finally ripe to share what leave-taking and homecoming truly mean for her. With her latest novel now translated into English by Jozefina Komporaly under the title Home (London, 2024), Andrea is bringing her contemplations to this year’s European Writers’ Festival.

Many of us left our homeland behind, prompted by circumstances, driven by various forces. Although the book narrates a journey back to an unnamed home country for a school reunion, with several classmates also returning after long absences, its essence is not so much a story of a trip. The focus is on different kinds of travel: past journeys, journeys into the past - and into ourselves.

A reunion inevitably induces reflection, it can serve as a reality check relative to our own youth and also to our peers while we reacquaint as adults. How much do we leavers share as to the nature of our connections to the place we came from? Some decide to cut all ties, others will always be longing after the homeland. But the homeland has transformed since we left and we ourselves changed in many ways, so all points of reference have shifted.
Identity, personal relationships, culture, patriotism, belonging – just a few of the complex emotional questions to delve into, with language as a vital theme in its own right, weaving through the book.

The Hungarian original Haza (Budapest, 2020; YF.2022.a.16166) is already in our collection, hopefully the translation will arrive soon as well.

Andrea is a guest on the ‘Europe on the Move’ panel at 3 pm on 19 May. She also offers some insight into her journeys in an English-language interview by Hungarian Literature Online .

Ildi Wollner, Curator, East and SE European Collections

Cover of The Moon in Foil and photograph of Zuska Kepplova (photogtaph by Juraj Starovecký from Slovak Literature in English Translation website)

Zuska Kepplova, The Moon in Foil – Sunday 19 May 2024, Panel 3, ‘Europe on the Move’

In an interview for the Chicago Review of Books Zuska Kepplova – a writer, editor and political commentator – makes a statement that resonates with many Eastern European world nomads, as those ‘who were born in late socialist societies and grew up after the revolutions, [this label] is a novelty. They were not used to thinking about themselves as “Eastern Europeans” and dealing with prejudices, their own or of others. Entering the free world thus also means entering a hierarchy or a web of relations of power.’

Kepplova’s book Buchty švabachom (Bratislava 2017; YF.2019.a.10137), recently translated into English by Magdalena Mullek as The Moon in Foil (Chicago, 2023), traces people’s relationships with each other and their place of migration. The short story form is a perfect fit for Kepplova’s storytelling. The deliberately scattered narrative is thoughtful, gives glimpses into the chaotic lives of young Slovaks tempted by newly opened world enticing them with a vision of success, but leading to a life of mundanity and struggle for social advancement, often devoid of self-fulfilment. Many a reader will relate to the characters' commonplace existence and reflect on their own longing for buchty  or pierogi left behind at home far away. Those who want to see what happens when the migratory birds return should read Kepplova’s Reflux. Niekto cudzí je v dome (‘Reflux. There is a stranger in the house’; Levice, 2015; YF.2017.a.24619).  

Olga Topol, Curator, Slavonic and EE Curator

Posted by European Studies at 10:00 AM

Tags

Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Literature, Romance languages, Slavonic, Slovakia, Translation

10 May 2024

European prose in transformation (Part 1). The European Writers’ Festival returns to the British Library

30 established and emerging authors from across Europe gather under one roof to delve into the theme of ‘Transformation’ at the second European Writers’ Festival taking place over the weekend of 18-19 May 2024 at the British Library. Two days of performances and panels will discuss how storytelling, its creators, its original language as well as its translation, are changing as the continent itself is transforming. While writing about personal experience embedded in history remains central to European literature, the Festival’s guests attempt to break literary traditions and established boundaries, setting off for transformative new journeys – and carrying us with them. In this and a second blog post, our curators and one guest contributor highlight some of the themes of the festival.

Laurent de Sutter and the cover of his book After Law (Cambridge, 2020) (Author photograph from the website of the Law Art Politics podcast)

Laurent de Sutter, After Law – Saturday 18 May, Panel 2, ‘Changing Gears’

On Saturday 19 May 2024, Belgian philosopher Laurent de Sutter will take part in the panel ‘Changing Gears’, alongside other authors who switch jobs and genres.

A real 21st century polymath, Laurent de Sutter wrote his law thesis on the politics of representation while working as a freelance writer for pop-rock magazine Rif-Raf. He then wrote about pornography and porn-stars, pop-culture, aesthetics, drugs and capitalism, and cinema, while becoming an editor directing a collection for the Presses Universitaires de France.

Laurent de Sutter is today Professor of Legal Theory at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the author of more than 20 works translated into a dozen languages, and an essential thinker on the concept of law and of the ways we categorise and describe reality. Unexpectedly, his recent philosophical essay on modernity and anti-modernity, Superfaible! Penser au XXIe siècle (Paris, 2023) was also the recipient of the Grand prix de Poésie de l’Académie royale de langue et de littérature françaises de Belgique, 2023. Maybe this is not that surprising for a provocative and limitless writer who is also a self-confessed ‘pop-philosopher’ (a term invented by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze in the 1970s, for a genre that explores the intersections between philosophy and pop culture).

You can find his books, in French, on the life and death of superheroes (Vies et morts des super-héros; Paris, 2016; YF.2020.a.6105) or his history of law through the architecture of one contemporary building (Post-tribunal: Renzo Piano Building Workshop et l'île de la Cité judiciaire; Paris, 2018; YF.2018.a.15252) in our collections. Recent titles in English include Narcocapitalism: Life in the Age of Anaesthesia (Cambridge, 2018; YC.2018.a.13255) and After Law. The latter won the French Voices Award and the Leopold Rosy Prize of the Belgian Royal Academy and is the featured book at this year’s European Writers’ Festival.

Sophie Defrance, Curator, Romance Collections

Cover of Jonah and his Daughter and photograph of Ioana Pârvulescu (pictures from the Romanian Cultural Institute)

Ioana Pârvulescu, Jonah and his Daughter – Saturday 18 May 2024, Panel 3, ‘Transformation through Translation’

While I was preparing Ioana Pârvulescu’s rather mystical new novel for print, I made a trip to Rome, and more specifically to the ancient Christian burial grounds of that city, known to us as the catacombs. To my surprise, I came upon an array of depictions of the prophet Jonah – being thrown overboard on this sea journey undertaken in an attempt to outrun the will of God; languishing inside the whale or being regurgitated from the sea monster. My guide explained that the early Christians saw Jonah as a precursor to Jesus, with his internment in the belly of the great fish for three days pre-echoing those three days in the tomb before resurrection; his rebirth thereafter being the new life in faith.

Paintings of the biblical story of Jonah from the Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter in Rome

While Pârvulescu’s novel is far more subtle and complicated than a mythologised story of prophecy from the Old Testament, her writing is never finer than when describing that extraordinary scene of ingestion and eventual discharge :

...Jonah grew very dizzy and felt he was falling back-ward into emptiness, looking through eyes in which there was no wide-eyed seeing. And all of a sudden, the seeing returned to his eyes and his sight filled with stars, some so close that you could catch them in your hand, stars that were in motion, others so high above that they were but specks of silver dust...

Yet this is not a novel of obscure stories and characters far removed from us in time and mentality: Jonah is a living, breathing man with a speech impediment and a prodigious sexual appetite, who befriends waifs and strays with characters that steal our hearts and make us want to sit down with these people, around a campfire perhaps, and learn their ways. Just as in her previous novel, Life Begins on Friday, the author draws us into historical periods through the quirks of her characters, their insecurities and their passions, and the empathy she evokes for them through her expert storytelling. As in all the best dramatisations of the past – be it in films, theatre plays or novels – historical figures are given height and depth because we have sat with them for a while and heard their voices.

We learn in the introduction to the book that Ioana felt compelled to write it because the vagaries of spellcheck often rendered her name to that of the ‘minor prophet’ in Romanian and that from this whimsical coincidence she was led to re-evaluate and become enamoured of a narrative different from the one she expected:

The reason his story is so beautiful and so human is because it is about deadly monsters that play a double part and which in the end are life savers, about the need for darkness, about fear and running away, about passion, about getting involved or standing aloof, about being human or separate from humanity...

Jonah’s daughter learns the story of her father, and passes it on her to her daughter, and so on down through the ages. In this way our author becomes a daughter of Jonah too, bringing the story of the recalcitrant prophet up to date with our times. In the end all the very best stories reveal aspects of our human - and mystical - experience in this realm, and I for one have been greatly enriched by this one.

Susan Curtis, Editor, Istros Books

Posted by European Studies at 3:24 PM

Tags

Belgium, Literature, Romance languages, Romania, Translation