World Books

Book Review: Antoine Volodine’s “Bardo or Not Bardo” — Seriously Spoofing the Afterlife

April 21, 2016
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One reads this strangely engaging book, like Volodine’s others, with a sort of knitted-brow amusement.

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Book Review: Mathematicians in Combat — Michèle Audin’s “One Hundred Twenty-One Days”

April 11, 2016
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Audin scrutinizes political commitment when it is undertaken by representatives of an intellectual discipline detached from the real world.

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Book Review: Stories by Korean Women — Sad Brilliant Inventions

April 10, 2016
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What could have been excursions into monochromatic despair are elevated, through resourceful inventiveness, into exhilarating journeys.

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Fuse Book Review: Poetry in the Rough — Jean-Paul Clébert’s Graphic Evocations of a Clandestine Paris

April 1, 2016
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An extraordinary book that should be in the hands of every lover of the French capital. And don’t we all love Paris?

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Book Review: Is It Possible to Hate Music? And Why?

March 25, 2016
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This invigorating book formulates a caveat: beware of music..

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Book Review: “The Last Weynfeldt” — The Virtues of a Wry, Cosmopolitan Vibe

March 15, 2016
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In this enjoyable novel, Martin Suter has chosen to sidestep depth in favor of colorful characters fine-honing their hopes and dreams..

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Book Review: “Les Diaboliques” — An Essential Hidden Dimension in French Literature

January 31, 2016
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In “Les Diaboliques” readers must expect quite a lot of crime and some misogyny as well.

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Poetry Review: “Zone: Selected Poems” — Reproducing the Music of Guillaume Apollinaire

January 27, 2016
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Whenever there is a choice to be made between meaning and melody, the translator tends to opt for the latter.

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Book Review: Marceline Loridan-Ivens’ Memoir of Surviving the Nazi Death Camps

December 23, 2015
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In contrast to similar extermination-camp memoirs, But You Did Not Come Back focuses on the affliction of women.

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Book Review: “The Big Green Tent” — Lives Lived Without Trust, Memorably Conveyed

December 18, 2015
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We root for all of the ordinary folk who survived — and are still surviving even now — one of the bleakest and saddest periods in Russia’s history.

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