Other Press

Book Review: “Camille Pissarro: The Audacity of Impressionism” — A Man of Admirable Qualities

December 28, 2023
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Anka Muhlstein’s book is probably best read as a biography of a hard-working family man and not as a thorough assessment of Pissarro’s art.

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Book Review: Éric Vuillard’s “An Honorable Exit” — A Brilliant Chronicle of a Tragedy Foretold

April 27, 2023
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Éric Vuillard’s method is to create an ironic rapport with the powerful: his vignettes dramatize how France’s elite delude themselves into thinking the colonial world order can be kept intact after World War Two.

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Book Review: “The Undercurrents” — History as a Whisper in Your Mind

September 4, 2022
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Kirsty Bell’s psychological-cultural-topographical-historical walking tour of Berlin is an idiosyncratic delight.

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Book Review: “Home Reading Service” — Beyond Empty Words

January 19, 2022
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In Home Reading Service the literary and the illiterate rub shoulders, and we are given a vision of people tentatively emerging from behind walls.

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Book Review: “The Anomaly” — We Know Less Than We Think

November 20, 2021
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The Anomaly is an entertaining philosophical critique, suggesting that nothing is as it seems, knowledge is imperfect, and the human predicament will perhaps always be more inexplicable than we can admit to ourselves.

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Book Review: “Disquiet” — A Compassionate Litany of Tragedies in the Middle East

July 28, 2021
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This is a timely novel, a lament for the multicultural harmony that has disappeared from Mesopotamia as well as a dire warning: fundamentalism is on the rise, not just in the Middle East but in the West as well.

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Book Review: “The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris” — The Mystery of Art and Love

April 8, 2020
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Marc Petitjean seamlessly moves from describing intimate scenes to discussing Frida Kahlo’s art and its significance.

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Book Review: “Prague Spring” — The Fragility of Freedom

April 2, 2019
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This consistently interesting novel adds an unforgettable dimension to an historical event about which we thought we knew all there was to know.

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Book Review: “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” — A Kind of Apotheosis

March 22, 2019
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In more pedantic hands, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen could easily have been a tedious and frustrating read. Instead, despite the dense and ultimately inconclusive source material, the book is continuously fascinating.

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Book Review: “Madonna in a Fur Coat” — Sabahattin Ali’s Extensive Epitaph

February 11, 2019
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It’s worth pointing out that Sabahattin Ali has deliberately reversed traditional gender roles in Madonna in a Fur Coat.

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