World Books

Poetry Review: “Dialogos” — Superb Poetic Conversations

November 9, 2012
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Translator George Kalogeris’s modernizing does what it should: It brings the poems into the thought-world where modern readers live.

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Theater Review: A Moving “let us find the words”

November 2, 2012
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Ingeborg Bachmann wanted freedom for them both. She says in her letter, “I am free and I am lost in this freedom.” Dominique Frot is a brave actress. She presents the poet’s freedom in her body and voice.

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Book Review: A Flimsily Built “House of the Interpreter”

October 31, 2012
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Instead of exploring his inner life at the time or his adult understanding of the institution that shelters him, Ngũgi wa Thiong’o draws a dispassionate and largely predictable report of boarding school life.

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Book Review: A Wilted “Black Flower” From Korea

October 28, 2012
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I can see why celebrated Korean writer Young-ha Kim was attracted to this real life story of about a thousand Koreans emigrating from Asia in 1904.

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Book Review: Per Petterson’s “It’s Fine By Me” — A Sensitive Tale of a Lost Boy

October 1, 2012
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“It’s Fine By Me” is the story of so many lost boys in literature, who run, who rebel, who are crushed, or luckily find their way.

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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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Theater Review: “Hand in Hand Together” — The Perils of Political Theater in Translation

September 15, 2012
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Many historical dramas are content to use the past as a lens through which to view the present, but “Hand in Hand Together” does more than explore how conflicting ideologies influenced the creation of modern Israel. Dramatist A. B. Yehoshua explores the other possible routes history may have taken.

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Book Review: “The Barcelona Brothers” — A Nasty Piece of Spanish Noir

August 22, 2012
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International noir novels no longer revolve around exotic police procedurals or gimmicky detective stories. They aim to pound readers into the pavement.

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Book Review: Classic Supernatural Satire — “The Wild Ass’s Skin”

August 15, 2012
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Helen Constantine’s new translation of Balzac’s “The Wild Ass’s Skin” serves this wonderful and weird book well. It is one of the great, black comic fables in world literature, a dazzlingly demented exploration of a society’s lack of imagination.

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Book Review: Celebrating the Forceful Art of “Three Strong Women”

August 14, 2012
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In the heartrending “Three Strong Women,” award-winning novelist Marie NDiaye infuses her Senegalese women characters with a personal sense of dignity and a strong belief in self.

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