World Books
The prose of Patrick Modiano, this year’s Nobel prizewinner, has a distinctive French style whose directness and grammatical limpidity by no means exclude semantic depth and complexity.
Read MoreA compelling chronicle of the life of the notorious Russian writer and political activist Eduard Limonov.
Read MoreAlthough Street of Thieves is less accomplished than Zone, it once again displays how Mathias Énard is seeking new ways to talk political issues in precise, often gripping prose.
Read MoreAndré du Bouchet writes the kind of poetry that other poets ponder, perhaps resist or even reject for a while, yet inevitably return to study even if (or because) their own poetics are starkly dissimilar to his.
Read MoreReady to Burst is a compelling, intricately structured story told in resourceful, oft-poetic language by a influential Haitian poet and novelist.
Read MoreIn F, vertigo is often palpable. Evil exists. “The terrifying beauty of things” does, too.
Read MoreElizabeth Harrower’s In Certain Circles is a stunning novel about class and marriage and power; Can Xue’s The Last Lover is a tedious surrealistic farce.
Read MoreSerbian writer David Albahari’s fascination with uncertainty fuels a grim, sardonic tragi-comedy in which silence plays an elemental but enigmatic role.
Read MoreBecause of the national tension between the Tutsis and the Hutus, and its effects on everyday routines in the school, this novel cannot long remain a bemusing tale of adolescent life.
Read More
Book Commentary: Patrick Modiano — An Oddly Elliptical Choice for the Nobel Prize for Literature
Patrick Modiano’s simple sentences pull one in; the nostalgia of loss and pain of youth and the hunt for a vague, romantic Other are easy to relate to.
Read More