What is the European Review of Books? A primer, if you are here for the first time.
Write your memoir in a hostile tongue. On Marina Jarre, from Latvia to Italy and back.
On artificial intelligence, murderous elephants & Elizabeth Bishop
On the untranslatability of Ukrainian jokes
On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish & global Englisch. « My own language, made camp. »
On Havelok the Dane, medieval air & the world’s largest wind farm






« Less is more »? The scale and shape of his body gave the architect Mies van der Rohe an unequaled weight and architectural authority.
Or, the art of the error
Why death? Who or what dies? Philosophers tend not to explain, but to justify. When do such questions become biological questions? Does it help?
On Edda Mussolini & fashionable fascism. Can a woman be dangerous yet powerless?
Dramatic economic inflations have punctuated twentieth-century political history. Is austerity a class strategy?
Floods, hailstorms, plague, fire, children lost on a mountain or trapped for years in a ruined villa. On the stories of Adalbert Stifter.
On the travels of Karl-Markus Gauß, and the unlikely guardians of the dream of Europe.
On Cyril Schäublin’s Unrueh (2022), cinema & scale. « No other film has so resized me. »
A story about a lonely railway guard on a desolate steppe. « In the cursed August of 1991 the radio informed Kasatonov that there was a state of emergency in the capital. Then it fell silent, as if the receiver had broken. »
A story about romance. « The eve of a suitor’s arrival, bigger than Christmas or birthday, I tell you. »
On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino, newly translated: a Q&A with Alexander Chee.
Fragen, Antworten, Quintessenzen.
How could it be that despite decades of rigorous European unification, of open borders and largely adjusted standards of living, a virus was able to kill up to 40 times more people in one country than in another, only a few hundred kilometers away?
Wie konnte es sein, dass trotz jahrzehntelanger rigoroser europäischer Einigung, offener Grenzen und weitgehend angeglichener Lebensstandards ein Virus in einem Land bis zu 40 Mal mehr Menschen töten konnte als in einem anderen, nur wenige hundert Kilometer entfernt?
A friend of mine likes to say that the moon landing was real, but dumb. On astronautical tokenism.
Shoulders were slapped, fingers pointed, hearts fired up. Perhaps a little scuffle broke out after class, a boisterous wrestling over insults exchanged. Nothing to be concerned about. Acquiring knowledge was, after all, a combative affair.
What is the European Review of Books? A primer, if you are here for the first time.
Dramatic economic inflations have punctuated twentieth-century political history. Is austerity a class strategy?
Write your memoir in a hostile tongue. On Marina Jarre, from Latvia to Italy and back.
A story about romance. « The eve of a suitor’s arrival, bigger than Christmas or birthday, I tell you. »
Floods, hailstorms, plague, fire, children lost on a mountain or trapped for years in a ruined villa. On the stories of Adalbert Stifter.
On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish & global Englisch. « My own language, made camp. »
On the travels of Karl-Markus Gauß, and the unlikely guardians of the dream of Europe.
On the untranslatability of Ukrainian jokes
On Cyril Schäublin’s Unrueh (2022), cinema & scale. « No other film has so resized me. »