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Library: Current Preoccupations
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Book | « Nothing fills the chest so completely as a last breath »This article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.
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Lieke Marsman, who was the former Dutch Poet Laureate, died in early June of this year, aged 35.
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Books | The built and unbuilt worldThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.
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Ines Weizman and Eyal Weizman are a couple. Each has just published a book that uses architecture to explore history, geopolitics, war.
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To what extent are we part of Mark Zuckerberg?
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I started reading « The future is for everyone; the path to a positive AI future », an essay by Mark Zuckerberg, the intellectual equal of Elon Musk, « We are fortunate…
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Cultural observation
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A friend of mine from Brussels visited me in Rīga last week. She had never been to this part of Europe before, so there was a lot of exploration to…
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Museum for one
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I have learned what artistic freedom is. It happened in a secret museum somewhere in Sweden. I had to wade through tall grass toward a windowless barn, painted in faluröd, the…
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Would you rather eat your friend or your enemy?
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This summer, when it’s been too hot to contemplate cooking any kind of meat, let alone human, Le Monde has been publishing a wonderful seven-part series on cannibalism by the science journalist…
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When the beans won’t cook
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I’m futzing around the kitchen, heat-wave grumpy. I’m cooking white beans with tomatoes for dinner; I soaked the dried beans overnight, but they are a little too old, too long…
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A forest
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The weather has been chaotic enough in the Baltics to produce perfect conditions for forests to offer their annual gifts: berries, mushrooms, all sorts of plants, accompanied by a bunch…
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Mothers who don’t feel so motherly
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Last week, I wrote about Nebraska, a novel in which a mother pushes her handicapped child in front of a train. This week I’m reviewing an only slightly less murderous non-fiction book…
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Odysseus and the global wars veterans
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Somewhere near Chasiv Yar, along the « fortress belt » in the Donetsk region, Serhii Krynitskyi, a Ukrainian soldier, crawls out of the dugout that he has been holding for the last…
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Mrs. Chatterjee’s children
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The novel’s grisly premise hits you on the opening pages: Anna Chatterjee’s husband and two surviving children are journeying to the upstate New York prison where Anna is scheduled for…