World Books

Poetry Review: Romanian Poet Gellu Naum — Living in the “Blue Crypt under the Night’s Obscure Seal”

August 22, 2014
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Gellu Naum does not use the heterogeneous juxtapositions of surrealism to create something jocular, absurd, prankish, or gratuitously paradoxical.

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Book Review: The Absurdity of Living in the Space Between — “Elsewhere” by Doron Rabinovici

August 7, 2014
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Elsewhere is a tragicomic work, its plethora of absurd coincidences an attempt to portray the senseless plight of the post-postmodern man.

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Book Review: “The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair” — Beware the Hype

July 15, 2014
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The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is a long but fast-paced book that walks the line between airport novel and true work of literary fiction.

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Book Review: In “Europe in Sepia,” Croatian Writer Dubravka Ugrešić Bets a Few Chips on the Future

July 8, 2014
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Translator David Williams has hit upon a judicious combination of snappy repartee and dark underbelly that communicates essayist Dubravka Ugrešić’s rapier wit and black despair in equal measure.

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Book Review: “The Thaw” — Memorable Stories of Fear and Loathing in Iceland

July 8, 2014
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Throughout these superb stories, there is a certain desolation, of the heart as well as of the landscape.

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Theater Review: A Spectacular Russian Staging of “Eugene Onegin”

June 9, 2014
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I was mesmerized by the evocative stage pictures and the straight-at-the-audience, presentational mode of the actors, whose facial expressions and gestures so viscerally conveyed the emotional lives of the characters.

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Book Review: Grim Light Reading — Alain Robbe-Grillet’s “A Sentimental Novel”

June 9, 2014
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A Sentimental Novel, which seems to be at once pornography and a parody of pornography, is designed to provoke both revulsion and titillation.

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Concert Review: Singer Ute Gfrerer at Goethe Institut — An Evening of Uncommon Grace

June 4, 2014
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Singer Ute Gfrerer’s name should be spread far and wide to anyone — Jewish or not — who is interested in the music of that period, for this is first-rate work that should be heard for generations to come.

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Book Review: “Natura Morta” — A Powerful Still Life in Prose

June 2, 2014
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The omniscient narrator in Natura Morta is flawlessly neutral, allowing the images, minimal action, and characters’ reactions to the events of this single day in a Roman square to tell the story.

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Book Review: The “Lightweight” Gallows Humor of Jean Echenoz

May 29, 2014
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Eschewing harrowing realistic description, Jean Echenoz adopts a jocular sardonic approach to the most gruesome battlefield realities.

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