Articles

Articles

Manga – Pictures That Literally Draw Interest

By Angela Decheva

These past few months have been tough – a euphemism at its best. At one point, I realized the horrifying validity of Trent Reznor’s words – every day is exactly the same – and found myself agreeing with a friend on how it felt as if we were in Groundhog Day. With every day being a monotonous string of events, two things made each week a little brighter: The airing of the final season of Attack on Titan and the time spent enjoying my newly acquired Death Note manga.

A nerd at heart, I am new to the world of manga and anime, even though I first started reading graphic novels like Sin City and V for Vendetta several years ago.

Van Gogh – Immersion in the Experience of Art Which Comes to Life

On November 18, 2021, the multimedia immersion into the world of Van Gogh was opened in Vienna for the first time. This experience has been touring the world for a few years now as "The Van Gogh Experience - Alive". The exhibition is not the first of its kind, other artists have been presented in a similar way, but not with such a colossal success.

Vienna is a place where art has always been part of the spirit of the city, but for the last ten years here I had managed to see no more than five Van Gogh’s paintings through temporary exhibitions. I really didn't know what to expect from this experience.

Books that Burn Bright

By Geri Decheva

“Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!”

Ray Bradbury

A year ago, I translated a book about the Calash People. The Calashum inhabit the high mountain area in the Chitral region of Pakistan. Thanks to the altitude and the challenge to get there, these people have survived the changes of time and their lives are pretty much the same as they were several hundred years ago and even more. Few are the innovations that have entered their civilization and culture: there is one broken television for decoration, no mobile phones, nothing of what we know. They have preserved their religion and rituals, as strange as they might seem to us, their folklore, their happiness.

The Boom of Erotic Literature

Looking for the Fairy Tale

by Geri Decheva

When writing about the boom of erotic novels I will be a bit biased and still it will be accurate from literally perspective. As a translator, I have translated over 30 erotic novels (most of them consisting of 3 to 5 volumes), so imagine the amount of work. Starting with “50 Shades of Gray”, I was astounded at the popularity the book gained and the hunger for it, the anticipation. The market was screaming and I was translating something which made me truly wonder whether I was on the wrong side of the literally genre. I can’t hold my sarcasm when writing about the topic simply because, as time and my experience have shown, all these books turned out to be basically the same. Sex was the same, plot was totally predictable, verbs, nouns, adjectives – same. It became so boring, but yeah, I have read all the bestsellers as part of my job.

Every generation has their erotic novels, but 50 years ago, and further back in time, they were read secretly. Women could not get over the shame of going to the bookstore and buying a copy of “Lady Chatterley's Lover”.