Books
An unusual and powerful historical drama that looks at the troubled relationship between Jews and freed slaves at the end of The Civil War.
While sound is certainly important, and language in the proper hands has its own music, syllabic harmonies need not be trumpeted as though they were the foundation of good prose.
In his exploration of history, Jack Beatty suggests that World War I, as we know it, was an improbable event.
Jonathan I. Israel has written a monumental three-volume history of the Enlightenment, approximately 2500 pages long, not including three lengthy bibliographies. His erudition is fabulous; his range is dizzying.
A strange mix of characters who all have complicated pasts gives rise to a novel that blossoms — exactly as a flower does — into a complex drama that includes several points of view and a wide range of emotions.
Both productions play around with chronology in order to show the dark side of history, to unmask convenient illusions of social or personal well-being by juxtaposing the myopia of the past with the payback of the future.
August Strindberg’s work unquestionably has not received the degree of popular acclaim in America that it deserves. It’s a bit mysterious, given that major U.S. playwrights — Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams — have openly acknowledged their debts to Strindberg.
This invaluable addition to the Austen literature offers two for the price of one: a beautifully designed and printed edition of the novel many consider her best and a parallel critical commentary that deepens our understanding and opens up a rich, textured view of her world and time.
The people of Annawadi live in conditions so bleak that “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” evoked, for one Indian reviewer, Primo Levi’s depiction of life in concentration camps.
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