A supple, evocative novel that meditates on family and loss and art.
translation
Book Review: “The Family Clause” — Tribulations of a Family with No Name
Jonas Hassen Khemiri does little in The Family Clause to put his own spin on the usual domestic showdown of repression versus dreams of liberation.
Book Review: “The Turncoat” and “Marrow and Bone” — Two Revealing Looks at World War II
For each of these major, prize-honored writers — Siegfried Lenz and Walter Kempowski– birth = destiny = art.
Book Review: “Necropolis” — A Book of the Russian Literary Dead
This memoir offers an invaluable, broad look at intellectual Russia before and after the revolutions of 1917.
Book Review: Ilan Stavans — Literature as Resistance
Ilan Stavans’ latest book is an engrossing potpourri of this thinker’s continuing thoughts about language, culture, and the self.
Book Review: “Interior” — The Thing-as-Himself
Thomas Clerc’s novel reminds us of a stubborn truth: we are all narcissists that live to accumulate shit in rooms.
Book Review: “Time of Gratitude” — The Quiet Happiness of Being Unnecessary
Russian poet Gennady Aygi wrote as an outsider, an ethnic outlier as well as a free-verse stylist of his generation.
Book Review: “To the Back of Beyond” — Extreme Ambiguity
Evidently, plain-spoken language plus doubt and apprehension equate to novels that, once opened, are very hard to put down.
Book Interview: Thomas Kitson on a Neglected Gem of Russian Modernism
Iliazd is more interested in working through all the possible reasons that generate behavior rather than grappling with issues of morality.
Book Review: “Rapture” — Modernism, Daredevil Style
Rapture is a worthwhile curio that grapples, entertainingly, with Modernism’s artistic, structural, and revolutionary quandaries.