Open-Letter
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Read MoreDid Marguerite Duras, who had worked in the French résistance during the war, feel guilty about not having been sufficiently concerned about the Shoah?
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 MoreTwo inviting collections of short short stories in translation — Catalan writer Quim Monzó sees fiction as an exhilarating if ingenious prison, Israeli writer Alex Epstein pens dreamy micro-yarns that free the imagination.
Read MoreA novel about sexual obsession, inspired by “Lolita,” stretches the limits of credulity. Rupert: A Confession By Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison, Open Letter, $12.95, 131 pages Reviewed by Tommy Wallach I consider myself something of an expert in the seldom studied theme of impotence in film and literature. Most…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Novelist and critic Dubravka Ugresic On this week’s World Books podcast I talk to novelist and cultural critic Dubravka Ugresic about her latest volume of trenchant essays and commentaries, “Nobody’s Home” (Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac). My conversation with Ugresic circles around her contention that, despite European enthusiasm for culture,…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Fiction in translation deserves all the notice it can get, but it doesn’t do anyone any good to patronize writers and readers by duplicating the happy talk that is turning people off of blurb-ridden book reviews in the mainstream media. My friend Chad Post, formerly at Dalkey Archive Press, has begun a…
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Author Interview: Heather Cox Richardson on “Democracy Awakening”