Book Reviews
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January 14, 2020 |
Karl Schlögel has a profound, even intuitive understanding of Russian domestic and foreign politics. His view reaches both far into the past and projects likely future developments. He recognizes that... -
December 5, 2019 |
Shalev photo (left)– Das blaue Sofa / Club Bertelsmann The pain has returned—in Zeruya Shalev’s latest novel, Pain (Other Press, 2019)—“like labor pains, [its waves] come every minute... -
November 5, 2019 |
My association with the work of Józef Wittlin started when Professor Anna Frajlich invited me to write a paper about Wittlin’s association with France for her 1996 Józef Wittlin conference at Columbi... -
October 28, 2019 |
Many poets, writers, and thinkers have dwelled on the meaning of poetry following great tragedy, with Theodor Adorno’s claim that “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (“Cultural Criticism an... -
October 23, 2019 |
Georg Rafisch, “headless,” 2015 / Flickr When I lived in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome, I made a point of stopping in San Francesco a Ripa whenever I was running errands. The church hous... -
August 21, 2019 |
Readers of Natalia Ginzburg’s masterful autobiographical novel Family Lexicon (1963; Eng. 2017) will welcome New Directions’ 2019 reissues of her novels The Dry Heart (1947; Eng. 19... -
August 20, 2019 |
Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200 CE), “How to Read” 論語集注, in Sishu jizhu 四書集注, Sibu beiyao edition (National University of Singapore) In A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter (Princ... -
August 12, 2019 |
Photo by Shevaun Williams A well-traveled road in our collective consciousness is the question of what it means to be human. Joy Harjo is a master of this examination and delves through layers... -
July 24, 2019 |
Amit Chaudhuri. Photo by Geoff Pugh. Amit Chaudhuri’s seventh novel, Friend of My Youth (New York Review Books, 2019), follows a version of the author in the years prior to the book’s... -
July 18, 2019 |
Photo by Ethan Chiang / Flickr Contemporary Taiwanese Women Writers: An Anthology (Cambria Press, 2018) is a collection of short stories in translation featuring contemporary Taiwan... -
July 3, 2019 |
Ever since early Islam, Jews have been dubbed the people of the book. The title stuck in European lands too, a deferential nod to the role of the Hebrew Bible in the Western canon, the breadth of Jew... -
June 27, 2019 |
Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s Ghazal Cosmopolitan: The Culture and Craft of the Ghazal (Jacar Press, 2017), a melding of personal and craft essays, qasidas, and, of course, ghazals, functions as a k... -
June 13, 2019 |
Dany Laferrière was elected to the French Academy in 2013. Edwidge Danticat won the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2018 and is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant.... -
June 4, 2019 |
Photo: Chandrashekhar Basumatary / Flickr The cover of Rudencio Morais’s collection of prose poems, Os dialetos do Amor (filLetras Editora, 2018; The languages of love), features a wo... -
May 30, 2019 |
Photo: Greenwich Photography / Flickr The title of Ognjen Spahić’s Head Full of Joy (Dalkey Archive Press, 2018), which won the 2014 European Union Prize for Literature, underscores i... -
May 28, 2019 |
Photo by Eirik Newth / Flickr In late 2018, India’s highest literary honor was awarded to Anees Salim’s fourth novel, The Blind Lady’s Descendants (Penguin India, 2015). The... -
May 21, 2019 |
Stare Dam, a small loch located on the southern edge of Birnam Wood in Central Perth and Kinross, Scotland / Photo by ShinyPhotoScotland / Flickr José Manuel Cardona’s collection Birnam Wo... -
April 18, 2019 |
Carne de mi carne: Antología de cuento (Plural Editores, 2018; Flesh of my flesh: Short-story anthology), is a collection of short stories inspired by the philosophical underpinnings of Mary... -
March 12, 2019 |
Sylvia Plath standing beside her bicycle, Marblehead, Massachusetts, July 24, 1951. Plath, who was eighteen at the time, and her Smith College roommate, Marcia Brown (later Marcia B. Stern), serv... -
February 12, 2019 |
Photo by Slava Bowman on Unsplash Through a wealth of examples across disciplines, from novels, and from personal experience, Svend Erik Larsen’s Literature and the Experience of Globaliza... -
January 31, 2019 |
Photo by Martin Lewison / Flickr When Convenience Store Woman came out in 2016, Murata Sayaka (b. 1979) won the Akutagawa Prize, usually the imprimatur of potential for a new writer.... -
January 15, 2019 |
Loretta Collins Klobah / Courtesy of Peepal Tree Loretta Collins Klobah’s Ricantations (Peepal Tree, 2018) is her second collection of poetry. The book has been selected as a Poetry B... -
January 10, 2019 |
Enrapture Captivating Media / Unsplash What becomes a legend most? Great talent, suffering, and mystery . . . three ingredients that French poet Arthur Rimbaud possessed in spades. General rea... -
January 7, 2019 |
Michael Bazzett / Courtesy of Milkweed Editions and the Star Tribune Long overdue, Michael Bazzett’s verse translation of The Popol Vuh (Milkweed Editions, 2018) does for the Mayan cr... -
December 18, 2018 |
Photo by Eran Finkle / Flickr Jeff Talarigo’s third book, In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees (Etruscan Press, 2018), offers a compelling assessment of the collective psychological st...
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Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and spending time in her backyard—a “precious contained universe...
Photo credit: Elsa Noblet / Unsplash
After 140 days at home, one person wants more space; the other, more plants.
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Barbara Epler started working at New Directions after graduating from college in 1984, and she has been its president and...
Photo by Matt Artz / Unsplash
I write with words that have shadow but don’t shelter
no sooner do I start this page insomnia burns it
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