World Books

Book Review: “The Notes” of Ludwig Hohl — “Everything Ever Created Was a Fragment.”

October 28, 2021
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Ludwig Hohl belongs in the line of such lucidly contentious thinkers as Karl Kraus, Pascal, and Lichtenberg, commentators whose writing oscillates between the traditions of literature and philosophy.

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Book Review: “Strange Beasts of China” — An Exuberant Chinese Fantasy

July 15, 2021
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The volume’s spirited imagination is strong enough to compensate for flaws in its translation.

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Poetry Review: “Outside” — Poetry and Prose of French Writer André du Bouchet.

July 5, 2020
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Take the poems slowly, enjoy the Cage-y silences, the concentrated words as they appear.

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Poetry Review: Poems, Not Artifacts — “New Poets of Native Nations” and a “Poets Playlist” at the Peabody

November 21, 2018
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Editor Heidi E. Erdrich has brought together a richly varied selection of poems, chosen from first collections of poetry written by twenty-one Native poets since the year 2000.

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Book Review: “To the Back of Beyond” — Extreme Ambiguity

September 21, 2017
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Evidently, plain-spoken language plus doubt and apprehension equate to novels that, once opened, are very hard to put down.

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Book Interview: Thomas Kitson on a Neglected Gem of Russian Modernism

August 3, 2017
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Iliazd is more interested in working through all the possible reasons that generate behavior rather than grappling with issues of morality.

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Book Review: “Our Dead World” — Testaments to the Never Quite Absent

June 16, 2017
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Bolivian author Liliana Colanzi delivers some risky, but important, messages in these enigmatic stories.

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Book Review: “Rapture” — Modernism, Daredevil Style

May 21, 2017
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Rapture is a worthwhile curio that grapples, entertainingly, with Modernism’s artistic, structural, and revolutionary quandaries.

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Book Review: Polish Poet Czesław Miłosz — Master of the Telling Detail

May 13, 2017
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For a reader without the reference points of mid-twentieth century Lithuania and Poland, this deeply researched biography can be a slog.

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Book Review: Gershom Scholem — A Rich and Complicated Jewish Life

May 2, 2017
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George Prochnik’s biography of Gershom Scholem is flawed, but well worth reading, especially for those struggling with their Jewish and Israeli identities.

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