March News and Highlights

Letter from Hudson Street March 2017 Dear Readers, Like many of you, we're all trying to stir from our winter slumbers here at NYRB and embrace the oddly early—and busy—spring we seem destined to have in NYC, where tulip and crocus bulbs have long ago sent up their first green flags. Perhaps the groundhog will be proven right after all and we'll have one last blizzard before the vernal equinox, but whatever the state of weather, March for us will be blooming with new books, poetry readings, and other affirmations of the the fresh life that the season brings. We can only hope that the same goes for you. Onward! Sincerely, The NYRB Staff Name these authors... Our reunion with the old [New York Review Quiz]( book last month has left us a little literary trivia happy. We're hoping you're with us because we've got another test for you, and this is specifically for true NYRB Classics and Children's Collection fans. It's simple: try to guess the authors behind each set of biographical details. You can do this. Who... -was born in 1907 -grew up in India, the child of a steamship company manager -started writing books to pay off her husband's debts after he left her penniless in Calcutta with two children to care for ? [ANSWER]( Who... -was born in Togo in 1941 -traveled to the north of Greenland in a journey that lasted ten years -wrote a prize-winning memoir about their trip ? [ANSWER]( Who... -was born in 1900 in Buenos Aires to German-speaking immigrants -was raised in tenement housing and was the only of his siblings to survive childhood -was expelled from elementary school at age eight -ran away from home at sixteen to write, working odd jobs to support himself ? [ANSWER]( Who... -was born in 1920 in Shanghai -had an abusive opium addict as a father -was hired by the US Information Service to write two anti-Communist propaganda novels -died as a recluse in Los Angeles ? [ANSWER]( Who... -was born in Poughkeepsie, NY, in 1873 -was the first director of New York's Bureau of Child Hygiene - tracked down Mary Mallon, the cook eventually known as Typhoid Mary, not once but twice ? [ANSWER]( Who... -was born in 1515 in Lyon, France -had a ropemaker father and then married a ropemaker -was reported to be an excellent horseback rider and, according to legend, disguised herself as a man to participate in jousting tournaments ? [ANSWER]( A Virtual Poetry Reading, from Us to You Even though April is National Poetry Month, we couldn't wait to celebrate the fact that we are publishing three (three!) poetry books in March and wanted to share video clips of two of the poets behind each reading their work. Think of it as an NYRB Poets reading, but enjoyed from the comfort of home (or while standing at the bus stop, in a DMV line, on your lunch break, etc.). Eugene Ostashevsky reads from an early version of [The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi]( Elise Partridge reads several poems for the Tree Reading series, including a few collected in [The If Borderlands]( Penelope Mortimer in the Animal Kingdom... Apologies in advance to any [ophidiophobes]( out there, but we just can't take our eyes off this series of photos Tennessee-based Instagrammer Lisa took of Penelope Mortimer's [The Pumpkin Eater]( alongside one furry and one not-so-furry friend. That's Brontë the cat (her friends call her "Bronty") and Lars the snake. If you've read the novel, you'll know that the first picture might serve as a very fitting metaphor for the story itself. Check out the [@pagesandpaper]( Instagram account for more lovely, bookish photographs. In the Press "It is a rare gift to come across a book as tender, affecting and complete as Pretending Is Lying." — Sheila Heti, [The New York Times Book Review]( "Döblin’s stories echo and reverberate with all of 20th century German literature, and the more we read, the clearer it becomes that other writers are echoing Döblin." —Ben Sandman, on Bright Magic in [Full Stop]( "The lore of her large, loving, and discordant family provides rich material for Ginzburg’s engrossing autobiographical novel, covering the years of the Italian writer’s childhood in 1920s Italy, her adolescence, first marriage, World War II, and her involvement in postwar literary society." —[Publishers Weekly]( on Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon "Part of the intrigue of a country like Mexico is, of course, its observable culture. But it is also a nexus of multiple cultures, and fragments of its complex history are still there for us to see in its ruins and in the faces of its peoples. [Sybille] Bedford may have been an outsider, but she took in the country with open and knowing eyes. And in telling us what she had seen, she did not lie to us." —Priyanka Kumar, on A Visit to Don Otavio in [The Sante Fe New Mexican]( "[Richard] Howard has done us the immense service of conveying [Guy de Maupassant's] Like Death’s intense psychology to a new generation of readers." —Madeline Medeiros Pereira, [The Paris Review Daily]( Events Tuesday, March 14, 7:30PM, [Pushkin House](, 5a Bloomsbury Square, WC1A2TA London. Eugene Ostashevsky reads from The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi and The Fire Horse. Monday, March 20, 5:30pm at [Brown University](, RI Hall 108, 60 George St, Providence, RI. "What's Found in Translation": a presentation on the occasion of the NYRB Poets publication of Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry, with Karen Van Dyck, Patricia Barbeito, Gazmend Kapllani, and Maria Margaronis. Tuesday, March 21, 7pm, [McNally Jackson Books](, 52 Prince Street, NY. Launch event for Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry, with Karen Van Dyck, Gazmend Kapllani, Hiva Panahi, Maria Margaronis, Stephanos Papadopoulos, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Thursday, March 23, 7PM, [Shakespeare and Company](, 37 rue de la Bûcherie, 75005 Paris. Launch event for The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi with author Eugene Ostashevsky. In conversation with Daniel Medin. Thursday, March 30, 7:30pm, [Warwick's](, 7812 Girard Ave, La Jolla, CA. Estelle Gilson, translator of Ernesto, in conversation with Elio Schaecter. March Books [ERNESTO]( [by Umberto Saba]( [THE WIND ON THE MOON]( [by Eric Linklater]( [THE FIRE HORSE CHILDREN'S POEMS BY MAYAKOVSKY, MANDELSTAM, AND KHARMS Translated by Eugene Ostashevsky]( [THE PIRATE WHO DOES NOT KNOW THE VALUE OF PI by Eugene Ostashevsky]( [AUSTERITY MEASURES THE NEW GREEK POETRY Edited by Karen Van Dyck]( [THE IF BORDERLANDS]( COLLECTED POEMS [by Elise Partridge]( [QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL WILLIAM MORRIS IN ICELAND by Lavinia Greenlaw]( [CONFESSIONS OF A HERETIC by Roger Scruton]( [THE HOUSE OF TWENTY THOUSAND BOOKS by Sasha Abramsky]( [WILD GEESE RETURNING CHINESE REVERSIBLE POEMS by Michèle Métail]( [Living]( [LIVING by Henry Green]( [CHINESE POETIC WRITING by François Cheng]( [THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LI HE Translated by J.D. Frodsham]( [Living]( by Henry Green is the March selection for the [NYRB Classics Book Club](. If you join the club by March 15, Living will be your first selection. Two more novels by Henry Green, [Blindness]( and [Party Going](, will be published next month. NYRB at the Movies If you follow the NYRB Classics blog, A Different Stripe, you might remember our [Film Fridays]( series in which we featured films adapted, some very loosely, from novels or stories collected in the NYRB Classics series. May we suggest one of these—an adaptation of the exceptionally loose variety—for weekend viewing? Elio Petri’s The 10th Victim, a highly stylized 1965 adaptation of the Robert Sheckley short story “The 7th Victim," which is collected in [Store of the Worlds](, is a wild parade of color, 60s fashion, and 007-esque gizmos and gadgets. Watch the trailer below (and read the story!): Header image: the NYRB Classics shelves at [City of Asylum Books]( in Pittsburgh, PA, courtesy of the store, 2017. New York Review Books 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](