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Book Review: “In Times of Fading Light” — A Rich Story of Divided Hearts

June 8, 2013
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Though its central events are in the past, conveyed by characters by means of often ambiguous shreds of memory and musing, “In Times of Fading Light” is a work of quiet power and beauty, dense with sorrow, telling detail, and suspense.

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Theater Review: A Political Refugee’s Tale — “Bashir Lazhar”

May 31, 2013
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Pittsfield’s Barrington Stage Company is now giving “Bashir Lazhar,” ably translated by playwright Morwyn Brebner, its American premiere and I admire the theater’s choice.

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Book Review: “The Woman of Porto Pim” — Riding on a Brilliant Train of Associations

May 28, 2013
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Antonio Tabucchi’s “travel book” transcends conventional literary forms: his stories occupy an attractive space between fiction and non-fiction, poetry, biography, short story and journalistic travel piece.

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Book Review: Israeli Novelist A.B. Yehoshua’s Fascinating “Retrospective”

May 23, 2013
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This fascinating book ends, leaving the reader with all sorts of questions — but that is exactly what really good fiction always does. Opening our minds, etching characters in our imaginations, and generating all sorts of possibilities.

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Fuse Book Review: Inclement “Climates”

May 7, 2013
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While reading Andre Maurois’ “Climates” you feel your world narrowing in uncomfortable ways.

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Book Review: “The Bottom of the Jar” — An Indelible Glimpse of Moroccan Life

April 25, 2013
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Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi’s autobiographical fiction draws deeply on his own childhood in Fez during the late 1940s and especially the 1950s.

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Poetry Review: Lapidary Ends — “Cut These Words Into My Stone”

April 12, 2013
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This anthology, made up of Michael Wolfe’s superb translations of ancient Greek epitaphs, begins in prehistory and ends in the sixth century C.E.

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Book Review: Meet Mikhail Kuzmin —The Oscar Wilde of Russian Literature

April 8, 2013
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Poet Mikhail Kuzmin, born in the 1870s into a family of Russian Old Believers, was a passionate exponent of gay literature in the early twentieth century.

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Book Review: Yves Bonnefoy’s Meditation on Poetry — Heady But Essential

April 7, 2013
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Yves Bonnefoy’s book is, fundamentally, a spiritual autobiography; yet it draws extensively on the outside world and ponders how it can be described in writing or depicted in painting.

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Poetry Review: Poet Henrik Nordbrandt — Hovering Between Banality and Revelation

March 31, 2013
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“Henrik Nordbrandt now holds a unique place in his homeland as its most celebrated national poet, who happens to have spent most of his adult life outside Denmark.”

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