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Current Preoccupations
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Meadows are the best
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My best friend in Brussels told me he never used the word meadow before he met me. And one of my fellow editors believes the ultimate form of tea is one that…
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The persistence of William Morris
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The idea for a workshop on « the university of Nowhere », where researchers and staff would conceive and describe a utopian university, came about after some accidental re-encounters with William Morris,…
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The many different faces of the shortest night
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This week, Latvians went into the wild. The longest day of the year fell on a weekend (21 June), and Līgo nakts / Jāņi — known as St John’s elsewhere…
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Carlo Ginzburg: They are the Dogs of God
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I needed to know more about werewolves. Carlo Ginzburg, I realized, was my man. Ginzburg is an Italian historian who practises what’s described as « microhistory » — in his case,…
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Orford Ness
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We stepped off the ferry — an open motorboat, with room for twelve passengers — onto the dock. We’d come for a day’s outing to Orford Ness on the Suffolk…
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The Berlin Review’s review
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The printed editions of Berlin Review, Zeitschrift für Bücher und Ideen, are a feast (three times a year in print, eight online). About half the articles are in German and you’re constantly…
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On Marjane Satrapi
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Some people remember 2000 as the year our computers DIDN’T all explode. I remember it as the year Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis appeared. Persepolis was a comic-book autobiographical novel, and its heroine was a…
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El Camino always provides
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Day 1 Two coffees in and the day has just begun. I’m on a plane to Portugal and everybody is basically dressed like me: the outdoor-wear. The man sitting next…
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Book | The Ice Prophet
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THE NETHERLANDS — While reading this new book about « Iceman » Wim Hof, one scene lodged itself most prominently in my mind: the one in which he goes to Amsterdam’s Vondelpark…
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Book | White Moss
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THE ARCTIC CIRCLE — An interview with Irina Sadovina, who recently translated a novel set in a nomadic Indigenous Nenets community in Northern Siberia, by Nenets writer Anna Nerkagi.
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Books | Interview Elina Alter
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RUSSIA IN EXILE — A Q&A with the translator and editor, who recommends Russian writers-in-exile to read.