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Book Review: Daniel Kehlmann’s “F” — An Amusing Look at Our Disjunctive Modern Life

September 24, 2014
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In F, vertigo is often palpable. Evil exists. “The terrifying beauty of things” does, too.

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Book Interview: David Albahari’s “Globetrotter” — The Postmodern Émigré Blues

September 18, 2014
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Serbian writer David Albahari’s fascination with uncertainty fuels a grim, sardonic tragi-comedy in which silence plays an elemental but enigmatic role.

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Book Review: The Darkly Droll, Desperately Farcical “Privy Portrait”

September 5, 2014
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Privy Portrait portrays a contemporary human being who has lost all handholds, all footholds, all practical, moral, and metaphysical support—except for that provided by the articles of his beloved encyclopedia.

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Poetry Review: Romanian Poet Gellu Naum — Living in the “Blue Crypt under the Night’s Obscure Seal”

August 22, 2014
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Gellu Naum does not use the heterogeneous juxtapositions of surrealism to create something jocular, absurd, prankish, or gratuitously paradoxical.

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Book Review: The Absurdity of Living in the Space Between — “Elsewhere” by Doron Rabinovici

August 7, 2014
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Elsewhere is a tragicomic work, its plethora of absurd coincidences an attempt to portray the senseless plight of the post-postmodern man.

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Book Review: “The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair” — Beware the Hype

July 15, 2014
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The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is a long but fast-paced book that walks the line between airport novel and true work of literary fiction.

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Book Review: Grim Light Reading — Alain Robbe-Grillet’s “A Sentimental Novel”

June 9, 2014
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A Sentimental Novel, which seems to be at once pornography and a parody of pornography, is designed to provoke both revulsion and titillation.

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Book Review: “Natura Morta” — A Powerful Still Life in Prose

June 2, 2014
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The omniscient narrator in Natura Morta is flawlessly neutral, allowing the images, minimal action, and characters’ reactions to the events of this single day in a Roman square to tell the story.

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Book Review: The “Lightweight” Gallows Humor of Jean Echenoz

May 29, 2014
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Eschewing harrowing realistic description, Jean Echenoz adopts a jocular sardonic approach to the most gruesome battlefield realities.

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Book Review: “On Leave” — An Engaging Anti-War Story From France

May 28, 2014
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“On Leave” is a worthwhile novel that deserves this English revival because it convincingly conveys the alienation felt by soldiers who return home on a brief leave from hostilities taking place abroad.

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