World Books

Book Review: “On Leave” — An Engaging Anti-War Story From France

May 28, 2014
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“On Leave” is a worthwhile novel that deserves this English revival because it convincingly conveys the alienation felt by soldiers who return home on a brief leave from hostilities taking place abroad.

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Arts Remembrance: Polish Poet and Dramatist Tadeusz Różewicz — The Prophet of the Partial, the Herald of the Unfinished

May 22, 2014
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Tadeusz Różewicz’s best poems are blunt hammer strokes that pound at the impossibility of crafting poetry true to the sins of history.

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Book Review: “A Place in the Country” — A Heady Tour of W.G. Sebald Country

May 15, 2014
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It seems deeply appropriate that a superb book of essays by W.G. Sebald about his favorite writers should be his swan song.

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Poetry Review: Translations of Two Wild Russian Poets, Their Flair Restored

May 14, 2014
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New translations of Soviet-era poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Vladislav Khodasevich ask us to restore them to their rightful places in Russian and international literature .

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Film Commentary: Wes Anderson, Stefan Zweig, and Discovering the Value of “The World of Yesterday”

April 10, 2014
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Perhaps a movie such as “The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is much more than a zany comedy, can lead us back, as director Wes Anderson may have intended, to the fabulous writing of Stefan Zweig.

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Book Review: David Grossman’s “Falling Out of Time” — It Takes A Village

April 7, 2014
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“Falling Out of Time” is a book that gives all the truth that Israeli writer David Grossman can deliver, and far more intimacy than we strangers who are his readers have earned.

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Theater Review: “In Between” — An Amusingly Serious Look Into the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict

April 5, 2014
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Multi-talented performer Ibrahim Miari has written an insightful and funny one-man show that draws on his own life as the son of an Israeli Jewish mother and Palestinian Moslem father born in what is now the Israeli city of Akko.

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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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Book Review: “Killing the Second Dog” — A Pair of Captivating Polish Con Artists

February 27, 2014
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Polish writer Marek Hlasko sometimes writes like Hemingway, but without the premium the latter placed on honor and grace.

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Book Review: Philippe Jaccottet’s “Seedtime” — Exploring the Inherent Mysteries of the World As It Is

February 21, 2014
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French writer Philippe Jaccottet’s ever-questioning poetic analyses of haunting ephemeral perceptions are carried on with such scruple and sincerity that, for his European peers, he has become the model of literary integrity.

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