'The Easiest' Launch at OneBC Fashion Store

Sunday saw the launch of Rasa Askinyte's great novel 'The Easiest'.

The launch was held at the OneBC fashion store in Nottingham, an excellent, quirky venue that matched the tone of the novel.

As guests packed the space, Ventiduo, a Nottingham based Italian band played some laid back jazz and waiters took round Lithuanian snaps.

OneBC is the unofficial hub of creatives in Nottingham city and it was great to have a wide, eclectic group of guests - writers, artists, photographers and designers.

Svaiga Seliokas, local designer gave a beautiful deadpan reading of a couple of episodes from the novel. 

The Easiest Launch - May 21st

Come and celebrate the launch of The Easiest by Rasa Askinyte.

Hosted at the wonderful OneBC fashion store located in Sneinton Market, with great live music from Ventiduo, with bar, short talk, readings and activities including the chance to recreate the cover and dwell on your past lives.

The Easiest is the seond novel from hip Lithuanian writer, Rasa Askinyte. It is the story of Blanca who works at Café France. If she actually exists. There she meets the characters of the novel, Alex and Not-Alex, Greek, the owner of the café and Anastasia her best friend. It is a story of love, of not loving and of an apartment reached only by a ladder and birds that come crashing down onto table tops.

Askinyte’s novel is lightly and lyrically told, but beneath the surface bubbles a dark and disturbing world.

‘I like to dream that someone’s chasing me. I run as fast as I can, so he can’t catch me, but still I can’t escape. Sometimes the shadow extends his arm and touches my back. My whole body quivers to his touch and I hear a quiet, calm music.’ 

Sunday 21st May
3pm-5pm
OneBC Clothing, 9 Gedling Street, NG1 1DS
Free entry

Book launch
Bar
Live Music

Bring your children

www.noirpress.co.uk

World Literature Review Lauds Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite

There was a wonderful review of Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė' 'Breathing into Marble' in this month's World Literature Today. Andrew Singer, of Penn State University and editor of Trafika Europe writes, 'This work richly deserves the EU Prize for Literature, which it won. It’s a slim, memorable slice of suprareality'. He also writes of Marija Marcinkute's translation that the novel is 'rendered in translation from the Lithuanian with brilliant, deft urgency.

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2017/may/breathing-marble-laura-sintija-cerniauskaite#.WRNmIpwccf4.facebook

 

Breathing into Marble - A beautifully told piece of literary fiction with a twist

A lovely review for Breathing into Marble by book blogger, SocialBookshelves.com


This book is different to almost anything else you’re likely to find. It’s a beautifully told piece of literary fiction that features a twist on the “boy meets girl” tale by subverting it into a “boy meets mum” story about an adopted kid with some mental health issues.

Translated into English from Lithuanian, the language in which the original piece was a bestseller, it’s almost like a modern day revival of Hemingway and Graham Greene, or even Burroughs or Kerouac.

Just as it is, it’s a very good book. But it’s made more impressive by the way that it translates so easily – the story itself could take place almost anywhere, and that alone makes it relatable. That’s boosted by the beauty of the language and the little thoughts that Laura’s characters have. It’s full of little observations that leave you nodding your head and smiling, and it’s also entertaining.

The Noir Press line-up for 2017

The Easiest – Rasa Askinyte

April 2017

Blanka lives on the first floor of a wooden house that can only be reached by climbing a painted ladder. She thinks this must be the reason why she never has any visitors. She spends most of her days in France. No, not the real France…

Rasa Askinyte has a degree in philosophy. She is the winner of the Book of the Year in Lithuania. Her novels are characterised by a light, ironical tone; a lightness that belies the darkness that lurks behind.

‘The analytical, scalpel-wielding Aškinytė has no peer in Lithuanian literature. She appeals to scholars as well as hipsters. And I mean that as a compliment.’ Emilija Visockaitė

ISBN 978-0995560017

Paperback

RRP £10

 

Shtetl Love Song – Grigory Kanovich

September 2017

Grigory Kanovich's autobiographical novel ‘Shtetl Love Song’ is based on real events from the life of the author's family and the small town characters that peopled the world of his early years. It has been described as being a requiem for the pre-war Lithuanian Jewish shtetl.

Grigory Kanovich, born 1929, is one of the most prominent modern Lithuanian Jewish writers, winner of Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts. Kanovich was born into a traditional Jewish family in the Lithuanian town of Jonava. He has written more than ten novels – a virtual epic saga – dealing with the vicissitudes of the history of Eastern European Jewry from the 19th century to the present day.

‘Probably the last link in the chain is Grigory Kanovich’ Tomas Venclova

ISBN 978-0-9955600-2-4

Paperback

RRP £12

 

The Music Teacher – Renata Serelyte

November 2017

A small town police investigator broods obsessively on her tragic love affair with her school music teacher. After the town is shaken by the murder of a teenage girl, the police investigator quickly finds that her ex-lover is her main suspect.

Shortlisted for the Lithuanian Book of the Year Award, The Music Teacher was made into a film in Lithuania.

ISBN 978-0-9955600-3-1

Paperback

RRP £10

Superb Review for Breathing into Marble

Breathing into Marble got a great review from the Nottingham Evening Post and a wonderful write up of the work that Noir Press is doing. Review Amy Wilcokson wrote of the novel, 

"The reader is drawn into Cerniauskaite's fractured world, and left alarmed by the dark, foreboding tone of the novel...I found it hard to put this book down as the level of suspense within the novel was so intense...Breathing into Marble's relatively short length of less than two hundred pages, means it is a quick, yet haunting read, which I would thoroughly recommend.'

To read more about Noir and the full review of Cerniauskaite's novel, click the picture below.