The European Review of Books -

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Babushka Z Cosplay

Mattia Salvia

A Ukrainian great-grandmother inadvertently becomes a pro-Russian icon.

Pearls

Welcome to the European Review of Books

What is the European Review of Books? A primer, if you are here for the first time.

FROM THE EDITORS

Of trotting horses & angelic words

Marisa Libbon

I was reminded of Muybridge’s moving pictures while looking at the serial attempts of Ambrogio Lorenzetti (d. 1348/49) at rendering the invisible visible.

Pearls
My untranslatable name

Szabolcs László

When my parents went to register my name after I was born, they carried out an especially elaborate plan. They acquired a chocolate bar

Essays
Honorable men sowed this war

Olesya Mamchych

Six poems

Pearls
When the world makes rags of us

Gabriel Rom

He spoke of painting like a starving man speaks of food. On Józef Czapski, Memories of Starobielsk and the art of observation.

Reviews

MORE

The plant whisperers

Kapka Kassabova

If you know what you are looking for, you find edible and healing plants everywhere.

Essays
Glory to the rails

Oksana Forostyna

Millions of Ukrainians left the country during the first weeks of the invasion; four million were evacuated by train, including a million children. Thousands of dogs, cats and other pets, too.

Reviews
Child Kings

Marek Maj

« Time is a child playing draughts; the kingship is a child’s. »

Pearls
Fables of wickedness for a liquid Europe

Gonçalo Tavares

A story about traps

Stories
Talk Proto-Indo-European to me, darling

Ed Simon

*wīrós (man), *h₁ék̂wōs (horse), *gwéneh₂ (woman)

Reviews
Texting with … Ece Temelkuran (2)

Sander Pleij

« We are not aware of how defeated we are as intellectuals. »

Pearls
Queen of the night

Alexander Faludy

Maria Theresa, Habsburg empress, created the modern European state. To ponder her reign is to ask what the Enlightenment was — and is. Be careful with your nostalgias.

Reviews
My tongue is Simón Bolívar’s wet dream

Nora Muñiz

My boyfriend had colombianized my Mexican. But my friends had also argentinized it, chileanized it, venezuelized it, ecuadorized it.

Essays
After midnight

Alexander Etkind and Johanna Gautier-Morin

The modern world races forward with all its technological might, yet remains trapped in a reactive cycle of disasters. Necessary responses follow catastrophes rather than prevent them.

Essays
The Palestinian seafront of the future — Joséphine Baker in Haifa

Ines Weizman

Long ago, on the coast of Palestine, an elegant Modernist casino was frequented by Muslims, Christians, and Jews. One night in 1943 Joséphine Baker performed.

Essays

Blue, this time with a layer of aquamarine. Zaporizhzhia’s nuclear plant, rails that still run through Ukraine’s war, and a Ukrainian great-grandmother turned pro-Russian cosplay icon. Plants in Bulgaria and Western wellness, Bolívar’s tongue stretched across continents. Untranslatable names, Joséphine Baker on Palestine’s seafront, and a liquid Europe.

Discover

Issue Nine

TOP PEARLS

Current Preoccupations, week 39

Sander Pleij

Current Preoccupations, week 40

Fernanda Eberstadt

Current Preoccupations, week 38

Fernanda Eberstadt

Texting with … Lilia Topouzova

Sander Pleij

Letter to the editor

the editors

TIMELESS FROM THE LIBRARY

Re-generation

Maroussia Mbaye

Photos of young cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, who prove that after decades of depletion, soil recovery is possible.

Essays
Yellow, mellow, smellow

Peter Baldwin

The use of the colon in titling, and other laments.

Essays
Sick men of Europe

Houssine Alloul

King Leopold & Sultan Abdülhamid — a tale of two monarchs. «I’ve come to see them as twins of a kind: monarchs in bourgeois garb.»

Essays
The Three Body Solution

Ties Dams

The Chinese Communist Party embraces the sci-fi hit The Three Body Problem.

Essays
The original Dybbuk

Menachem Kaiser

A story about afterlife. « A saint! What do you mean he’s a saint! the scholar says. He’s a librarian! Are librarians saints? »

Stories
Bad writing advice

the editors

Writing advice is everywhere. Some of it might even be good! But we were interested in the bad.

From The Editors
Europe disenchanted

Gabriel Rom

A broad cast of characters who almost all speak to a solitary woe. This is Europe?

Reviews
Pigeon Water

William Nelson

Online, pigeon water is what we swim in and slather on ourselves.

Essays
Visit the extractocene!

G. Geltner

The Eisenthür silver mine is real; the village below is entirely fictive.

Essays

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Issue Nine