The Barren Nothing-Place
On growing up in the creases of bilingual versions of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
Needle & pen
Jane Austen valued fashion as an intrinsic part of one’s character — whether in her own life or in a novel.
Independence and/or Death
Brazilian artist Jaime Lauriano recreated the iconic painting Independence or Death (1822). A scorched earth remains in his own Independence and Death (2022).
The Mothers Grimm
What ties Gretel to her witch? Louise Glück’s poem Gretel in Darkness provides answers.
A worm’s-eye view of Gaza
An interview with Forensic Architecture’s founder Eyal Weizman. « Overground Gaza becomes de negative shape – the reflection – of Underground Gaza. »
Borrowed time is borrowed money
« We’re borrowing money from Germany, and nothing with ‘borrowed’ in the name sells. »〖 Found in translation 〗
The Van Leer headquarters is not a fish tank
« The office of the future » is all well and good, but what can be learned from the offices of the past that have sustained? Like: The Van Leer Headquarters in Aalsmeer.
Curtain call
An iron curtain makes a powerful canvas. Images from Sven Johne & Falk Haberkorn’s Aus Sicht des Archivs, documenting life in the former East Germany in the 1990s.
Moscow on the Med
Two winters in Istanbul. If you are a holder of a Russian passport, there are few places in the Western hemisphere that you can go without a visa.
The size of longing
On Jacob Israël de Haan’s Palestine and Arnold Zweig’s novel of post‑Zionist disillusionment
The coldest, cleanest water in Europe
Solitary sailing, and the philosophy thereof: What sort of writing is possible when the mind is at sea and so entirely occupied and swaddled?
Ice queens, sex machines
Insofar as erotica can ever be about something, what is Russia-themed erotica about?
What an animal isn’t
Two vastly different books — one a picaresque tale, the other a dystopian meditation — both recount a transition from human to animal or from animal to human.
« Everything starts with fire » — Interview with Hélène Cixous
« The smell was like the sharp notes of a trumpet, a sort of rat-tat-tat like a burst of gunfire, a bombardment. »
Jesus in the pines
Refugees and border guards in the Białowieża Forest. Scenes of violence play out behind a thick cover of trees, in a remote corner of Poland.
« Ça ira! There will be fire and enthusiasm in you »
In search of Anthon van Rappard, Vincent van Gogh’s forgotten friend.
« The hope of future Pan-African socialism »
A group of « skinny Black lads » enroll at Leipzig’s Karl Marx University in East Germany. An excerpt from Jackie Thomae’s novel Brothers.
And I stripped naked and became a man
The remarkable diary of third-century martyr Perpetua — a young mother sentenced to death — shows a soft, milky mother-body resisting a military-industrial empire. Texting with Fernanda Eberstadt SANDER PLEIJ Texting with Fernanda Eberstadt While on tour in the US and the UK, Fernanda Eberstadt answers a few questions about her new book Bite My Friends, via text. Portrait…
Two palindromes
→ Setting of the Sun at West Mountain / Puffing & panting ←→ Worm-eaten Rimbaud / Always knowing whom ←
Every end has a start
In 2005, Yamandú Roos embarked on the photographic project Europeans: one continent, forty countries, 65.000 kilometers.
The case of the missing elephant
On animal charisma and animal vengeance. What happens when an elephant goes missing a year after her death.
The original Dybbuk
A story about afterlife. « A saint! What do you mean he’s a saint! the scholar says. He’s a librarian! Are librarians saints? »
The big beige books
The most important unreviewed books of our times, reviewed. On Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China, Volumes I to IV
Trouble at work and home while my son is abroad
A story about living. « I have a family and I have a job and I have a teaching gig, and these things have me. »
Bad writing advice
Writing advice is everywhere. Some of it might even be good! But we were interested in the bad.
Europe disenchanted
A broad cast of characters who almost all speak to a solitary woe. This is Europe?
Forget your darlings
On memory palaces, medieval and modern. A medieval woman’s life would not have taken the form of a straight line.
Streuselkuchen
A story about coolness. « The phone rings. It is Jim Jarmusch, and he asks if I want to come over to his place. »
Corrupted, yet intact
On the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Europe of European integration.
Schwarzeneggerology
On Arnold, action cinema & Übermenschlichkeit. « Arnold Schwarzenegger was action cinema’s Adamic man, alternately entering and exiting normal human time. »
On location
Mission: Impossible and Eurocentric stunts, from Hollywood to Hong Kong. What does an action movie want to be?
The European Review of Books is 1 year old! Help secure its future.
We’ve built it; now come live in it.
On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino
On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino, newly translated: a Q&A with Alexander Chee.
How to people a landscape
On Cyril Schäublin’s Unrueh (2022), cinema & scale. « No other film has so resized me. »
Read between the stripes
How do Swedes perceived striped shirts? Great question.〖 Found in translation 〗
The cemetery-goer
On the travels of Karl-Markus Gauß, and the unlikely guardians of the dream of Europe.
Panties of the people
The hall burst into laughter. I was left completely puzzled.〖 Found in translation 〗
Overalls & eyeglasses
The glasses looked surprisingly like the ones in my Facebook profile.〖 Found in translation 〗
The Mass of Mies
« Less is more »? The scale and shape of his body gave the architect Mies van der Rohe an unequaled weight and architectural authority.
Beamer, Dressman, Bodybag
On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish & global Englisch. « My own language, made camp. »
Judge a book by its covers
The task is to hold your attention for more than three seconds.〖 Found in translation 〗
Doom is in the details
Floods, hailstorms, plague, fire, children lost on a mountain or trapped for years in a ruined villa. On the stories of Adalbert Stifter.
« droid » ➞ « druid »
The translator had probably not been familiar with Star Wars.〖 Found in translation 〗
An axe to grind should make you sharper
Forensic Architecture charts state-organized crimes, genocide and other disasters in three dimensions. « Flat maps can’t convey the politics of water and shit. »
« Bidoon » ➞ « Bedouin »
A violent mistranslation I still find amusing was with a poem titled 1965.〖 Found in translation 〗
Perhentian Sunrise
A story about romance. « The eve of a suitor’s arrival, bigger than Christmas or birthday, I tell you. »
The pulverization of memory
Write your memoir in a hostile tongue. On Marina Jarre, from Latvia to Italy and back.
Tragedy & farce in climate commentary
« We are fucked » vs. « It’s not too late ». The Club of Rome’s Earth for All offers a burst of stubborn optimism. But when does stubborn optimism become cruel optimism?
The invention of austerity
Dramatic economic inflations have punctuated twentieth-century political history. Is austerity a class strategy?
The inborn germ
Why death? Who or what dies? Philosophers tend not to explain, but to justify. When do such questions become biological questions? Does it help?
A Silence Shared
« If a story just like that one — dying babies, divine retribution — had come back to me from childhood memories, it would have seemed fantastical, unreal. »
No money off a dead woman’s body (& other poems)
« I like my tyrants like I like my heroes. That is, crushed by a giant chandelier. »
When the world makes rags of us
He spoke of painting like a starving man speaks of food. On Józef Czapski, Memories of Starobielsk and the art of observation.
Coagulated soy juice
〖 A killed darling. 〗 Lucia Berlin belonged to a less sanctimonious age than ours.
Flags & bones
On Curzio Malaparte’s Europe — and ours. The midcentury novelist read anew, on war’s aftermath and transatlantic romance. What was, or is, « postwar Europe », anyway?
« When I was silent… » — Interview with Sulaiman Addonia
Stop! I am doing what they all do: presenting writer Sulaiman Addonia as one-who-has-suffered, because he grew up as a refugee. It is a problem of genre. Suffering has become an interviewer’s crutch.
Of human children & language children
The first word I ever wrote was stsikukha: « pisser ». This is how my nanny Frosya called me to my face. On poetry and pathos in a bastard tongue.
Two palindromes
→ → Pursuing / you lead me to come to the future.← ← coming to the future, I lead you / demanding.
Kill your darlings
Like plots in a garden cemetery, with lamentations, good-riddances or other epitaphs.
Gerard Croiset & the adventure of the psychic detective
The clairvoyant Dutch grocer who charted the frontiers of parapsychology and lent a hand to the FBI. « Unbelievable but true! »
Skinned alive
Imagine your therapist assigned you to write your autobiography, after which you decided you were cured, so your therapist published it as revenge. Zeno’s Conscience turns 99.
A sangre fría
Fernanda Melchor’s prose hits you square in the face, but its lyricism works differently in Spanish. On Veracruzano modernism, lyrical slang, and worlds so new that style falls apart.
The Archipelago Conversations, an excerpt — Interview with Édouard Glissant
An excerpt from The Archipelago Conversations with the late French Carribean philosopher and poet. « The archipelagos of the Mediterranean must encounter the archipelagos of Asia, and the archipelago of the Antilles. »