What is the European Review of Books? A primer, if you are here for the first time.
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.
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.
Migranci i strażnicy graniczni w Puszczy Białowieskiej. Prastare drzewa ukrywają ekstremalną przemoc.
Jacob Israël de Haan’s Palestine, Arnold Zweig’s novel of post‑Zionist disillusionment, and « Israel’s first political murder ».
Lithuania has lost the Eurovision Song Contest thirty times.
Lietuva pralaimėjo Euroviziją trisdešimt kartų.
Javier Milei, literarily considered
Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews French-Algerian writer and philosopher Hélène Cixous.
A group of « skinny Black lads » enroll at Leipzig's Karl Marx University in East Germany. An excerpt from Jackie Thomae's novel Brothers.
Insofar as erotica can ever be about something, what is Russia-themed erotica about?
Solitary sailing, and the philosophy thereof: What sort of writing is possible when the mind is at sea and so entirely occupied and swaddled?
Language-learning and people-eating in Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi's The Centre.
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.
On Malta, noise is the norm.
The most important unreviewed books of our times, reviewed. On Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China, Volumes I to IV
On Arnold, action cinema & Übermenschlichkeit. « Arnold Schwarzenegger was action cinema’s Adamic man, alternately entering and exiting normal human time. »
In search of Anthon van Rappard, Vincent van Gogh’s forgotten friend.
On the fallen animals loved by Heinrich von Kleist & Curzio Malaparte.
How I stopped being an older brother (& other stories)
« Less is more »? The scale and shape of his body gave the architect Mies van der Rohe an unequaled weight and architectural authority.
« Genocide Studies » is a house with many rooms. It accommodates and even encourages a broadening of its central concept. And like all academic fields, it presumes its object of study will always be there.
In 2005, Yamandú Roos embarked on the photographic project Europeans: one continent, forty countries, 65.000 kilometers.
A family’s travelogue from Phnom Penh to Paris and back
Carnet de voyage d’une famille entre Phnom Penh et Paris et le retour
A story about danger. « She wondered when he was going to ask her where she was going. »
« Eylül adamın ‘ne tarafa gidiyorsun’ diye sormasını bekledi »
A broad cast of characters who almost all speak to a solitary woe. This is Europe? Ben Judah depicts a continent of islands, hollowed of associational life.
Online, pigeon water is what we swim in and slather on ourselves.
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 Eisenthür silver mine is real; the village below is entirely fictive.
On the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Europe of European integration. An excerpt from The Origins of European Integration: The Pre-history of Today’s European Union, 1937–1951.
Mission: Impossible and Eurocentric stunts, from Hollywood to Hong Kong. What does an action movie want to be?
We’ve built it; now come live in it.