wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

On our first Underappreciated segment of the summer, we look at the Slovenian novel Alamut, by Vladimir Bartol, a story that takes place in 11th-century Persia. It was originally published in 1938 and was widely translated, but wasn’t published in English until 2004. Michael Biggins, the translator of the English edition and head of the Slavic and East European Section of the University of Washington Libraries, and Tjasa Koprivec, an editor at the Slovenian publisher Sanje, which publishes the current Slovenian edition of Alamut, explain why the book should be read more, and why the author is such an intriguing character.