Summary: Hosts Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito return in the new year enthralled by the and ldquo;absolutely insane and rdquo; game of literary telephone in the latest issue of McSweeney and rsquo;s, in which texts are translated in and out of English and by, among others, J.M. Coetzee, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Lydia Davis. They look forward to games of a slightly different nature in several forthcoming Oulipian works: the 65th anniversary edition of Raymond Queneau and rsquo;s Exercises in Style; Georges Perec and rsquo;s La Boutique Obscure, the dream journal that inspired much of his fiction; and Scott Esposito and rsquo;s own The End of Oulipo?, a critical examination of the movement co-written with Lauren Elkin. Pierre Michon and rsquo;s The Eleven promises to be one of the author and rsquo;s best since his widely-respected Small Lives; Yasutaka Tsutsui and rsquo;s Paprika is story of clinical dream-invaders from one of Japan and rsquo;s premier science fiction writers. Daniel Medin also announces the launch of the eighteenth volume in The Cahiers Series, Elfriede Jelinek and rsquo;s Her Not All Her, next month at the Goethe-Institut in Paris. Daniel Medin then interviews Nick Barley, the director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the largest and perhaps best-known literary festival in the world. He gives a lively account of Edinburgh and rsquo;s literary heritage and the influence it still exerts on the atmosphere of the festival, and testifies to the continuing importance of such festivals for both authors and readers.
