Archipelago-Books

Book Review: “The fuzzy cinema of certain key events of my life” – Frankétienne’s “spiralist” novel “Ready to Burst”

October 6, 2014
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Ready to Burst is a compelling, intricately structured story told in resourceful, oft-poetic language by a influential Haitian poet and novelist.

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Book Review: “Our Lady of the Nile” — Prefiguring Rwandan Genocide

August 26, 2014
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Because of the national tension between the Tutsis and the Hutus, and its effects on everyday routines in the school, this novel cannot long remain a bemusing tale of adolescent life.

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Book Review: Pierre Michon and his Many Artistic “Lives”

March 31, 2014
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The books are bleak in that Pierre Michon provides no reassuring, idealistic view of the creative urge. Art leads to no transcendence, no permanent uplifting sentiment. Making poems or making pictures is a rough daily business.

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Poetry Review: A Spanish Metaphysical Poet Searching for Songs of Truth

June 25, 2013
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Poet José Ángel Valente deeply considered what kind of lyricism remains legitimate; that is, truthful, not deceptive; a song that moves us to truth, not a Siren’s song.

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Book Review: “The Woman of Porto Pim” — Riding on a Brilliant Train of Associations

May 28, 2013
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Antonio Tabucchi’s “travel book” transcends conventional literary forms: his stories occupy an attractive space between fiction and non-fiction, poetry, biography, short story and journalistic travel piece.

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Poetry Review: Translucent Translations — “Wheel with a Single Spoke”

September 26, 2012
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Nichita Stănescu is one of the poets who broke through the socialist-realism sound barrier and propelled Romanian poetry into new spheres.

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Book Review: The Print-Pantheist — Cyprian Norwid’s “Poems”

February 21, 2012
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In light of the many translations of Cyprian Norwid’s verse into English, Danuta Borchardt thought carefully about what she was going to focus on.

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Book Review: The Greatest Horror Novel of the 20th Century

March 16, 2011
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German author Ernst Weiss’s nightmarish vision of science gone mad in his 1931 novel Georg Letham is not rote Freudian; it is firmly in the social critique/ apocalyptic Darwinian mode.

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World Books Review: “The Twin” — Isolation Made Compelling

April 26, 2009
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A brilliant Dutch novel that explores the connections to the disconnected. The Twin By Gerbrand Bakker Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer. Archipelago Books, 343 pages. Reviewed by Tommy Wallach It isn’t easy to write a compelling novel about loneliness, for the simple reason that loneliness is boring. It makes for something of a…

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