What is the European Review of Books? A primer, if you are here for the first time.
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.
Ramallah, downtown, fifth floor. The phone rings and the caller’s number appears on the screen. It’s an unknown number. And yet a call that comes at this hour must be answered.
رام الله، وسط البلد، الطابق الخامس. يرن الهاتف ويظهر رقم المتّصل على الشاشة. إنه ليس لأحد معارفنا، فالرقم غير معروف. مع ذلك، يتطلّبُ اتصال هاتفي في ساعة مبكِّرةٍ كهذه الردَّ عليه.
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.