Book Reviews
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April 27, 2022 |
Written by one of Russia’s best-known horror writers, Anna Starobinets, Look at Him (Three String Books, 2020) is an unusual book: it reads partly as a memoir and partly as a journalistic in... -
April 19, 2022 |
Photo by Daniel on Unsplash Readers will naturally and, perhaps, unfortunately, wish to make connections between Sayaka Murata’s (b. 1979) newest novel, Earthlings, translated by Ginn... -
March 15, 2022 |
Photo by Milad Fakurian / Unsplash The largest collection in English of Romanian poet Ana Blandiana’s work, Five Books (Bloodaxe, 2021) displays her lifelong project of expressing lib... -
March 9, 2022 |
Photo by Yousef Espanioly on Unsplash Fahredin Shehu writes of Gili Haimovich’s Promised Lands (Finishing Line Press, 2020), “This book communicates globally giving more than a single... -
March 2, 2022 |
Photo by Dominik Scythe / Unsplash A new book by a Nobel laureate and Booker award-winning author always brings with it a sense of trepidation. Will the new novel live up to the already establ... -
February 23, 2022 |
Statue of renowned Kurdish historian, author, and poet Mastoureh Ardalan (1805–1848) in Erbil / Photo by Levi Meir Clancy / Unsplash Even though they appear to have a lot to say about the hist... -
February 22, 2022 |
Photo by Chris Wood / Flickr Houston’s Second Poet Laureate (2015–2017) and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 2019, Robin Davidson is the author of three books of poetry: Kn... -
February 1, 2022 |
Antoine-François-Jean Claudet, [Multiple Exposures of the Moon] (1846–52), daguerreotype, 2019.47, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel / Courtesy of the... -
January 27, 2022 |
Pablo Neruda / Courtesy of the Nobel Foundation In his latest novel, Oh, maligna (Acantilado, 2019), Jorge Edwards (b. 1931, Santiago) pays homage to one of Chile’s most important lit... -
January 12, 2022 |
Leading up to the COP26 conference, in September 2021 several hundred protesters met in London’s Parliament Square before marching to the Home Office / Photo by Alisdare Hickson / Flickr “Our... -
January 11, 2022 |
Jean Giono at his home, Le Paraïs, in Manosque, France, 1942 / Photo by André Zucca / Courtesy Les Amis de Jean Giono Written late in life, “Le Haut Pays” and “Camargue”—once again paired... -
December 21, 2021 |
Gokyo Lakes, Khumjung, Nepal / Photo by Kalle Kortelainen / Unsplash In the aftermath of COP26, it is easy to see we will most likely fail to limit global warming to 1.5℃, or even a catastroph... -
December 15, 2021 |
Photo by Geoff Stahl / Flickr Originally published in 1994, Mario Bellatin’s Beauty Salon, translated by David Shook (Deep Vellum, 2021), takes place in an unnamed c... -
December 13, 2021 |
Photo by Piotr Wójcik, Agencja Gazeta / Courtesy of Culture.pl Zbigniew Mentzel’s Kołakowski: Czytanie świata (Wydawnictwo Znak, 2020) is the first full-length biography of L... -
November 10, 2021 |
Photo by Aideal Hwa / Unsplash If reading Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg’s Robot (Penguin Classics, 2021), translated by Tomasz Mirkowicz, makes you think about Stanislaw Lem’s work, you’re no... -
November 9, 2021 |
Mitchell River National Park, Victoria, Australia / Photo by Zac Porter / Unsplash While the landmark anthology Guwayu – For All Times: A Collection of First Nations Poems (M... -
October 27, 2021 |
Female patient, La Castañeda, ca. 1915–20 / Fototeca Nacional, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia de México Men in finely cut suits and women in elegant dresses gather before a gate... -
October 11, 2021 |
Photo by andy lapham / Flickr Whether he is recounting his nighttime drive with a late colleague and poet around the beltway of the pulsing and vibrant São Paulo—a city so full of people and c... -
August 19, 2021 |
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Photo by Steven Taylor / Flickr The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s first novel, is textually connected to the... -
August 18, 2021 |
A dizzying debut with something to say and a story to tell, David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts (Ecco, 2020) takes crime novel conventions and recasts them in a fresh, uniquely Native... -
August 5, 2021 |
Photo by Moheb Soliman / From the series Tidings / A Protocol of Circulation, Washing Up & Will In the Land of 10,000 Lakes, to which I recently relocated from the land of infinite spectac... -
July 15, 2021 |
César Aira / Photo by Nina Subin / Courtesy of New Directions A canonical writer of the fantastic and foundational modernista poet, the reactionary polymath Leopoldo Lugones (1874–193... -
June 22, 2021 |
Nasim Marashi’s recently released novel I’ll Be Strong for You (Paeez Fasl-e Akhar-e Sal Ast), translated by Poupeh Missaghi (Astra House, 2021), is a first-person fictiona... -
June 17, 2021 |
Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing / Photo by Alex Berger / Flickr The year 2021 marks the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In April, the CCP released the latest e... -
June 9, 2021 |
Our society is increasingly global, and the era of Covid-19 is no different. We may forget our localities and the importance of community in consuming the news and internet media. One city, the domain...
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