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Reviews


  • The big beige books

    The big beige booksThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    The most important unreviewed books of our times, reviewed. On Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China, Volumes I to IV

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  • Europe disenchanted

    Europe disenchantedThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

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

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  • Art before art

    Art before artThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    On Paleolithic painters & speculative criticism.

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  • Forget your darlings

    Forget your darlingsThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    On memory palaces, medieval and modern. A medieval woman’s life would not have taken the form of a straight line.

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  • On location

    On locationThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    Mission: Impossible and Eurocentric stunts, from Hollywood to Hong Kong. What does an action movie want to be?

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  • How to people a landscape

    How to people a landscapeThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    On Cyril Schäublin’s Unrueh (2022), cinema & scale. « No other film has so resized me. »

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  • The cemetery-goer

    The cemetery-goerThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    On the travels of Karl-Markus Gauß, and the unlikely guardians of the dream of Europe.

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  • Doom is in the details

    Doom is in the detailsThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    Floods, hailstorms, plague, fire, children lost on a mountain or trapped for years in a ruined villa. On the stories of Adalbert Stifter.

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  • The pulverization of memory

    The pulverization of memoryThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    Write your memoir in a hostile tongue. On Marina Jarre, from Latvia to Italy and back.

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  • Tragedy & farce in climate commentary

    Tragedy & farce in climate commentary

    « We are fucked » vs. « It’s not too late ». The Club of Rome’s Earth for All offers a burst of stubborn optimism. But when does stubborn optimism become cruel optimism?

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  • The invention of austerity

    The invention of austerityThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    Dramatic economic inflations have punctuated twentieth-century political history. Is austerity a class strategy?

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  • No man’s land

    No man’s landThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    On Edda Mussolini & fashionable fascism. Can a woman be dangerous yet powerless?

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  • When the world makes rags of us

    When the world makes rags of usThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

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

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  • Flags & bones

    Flags & bonesThis article is available for Members only. Check out our subscription plans to become a member.

    On Curzio Malaparte’s Europe — and ours. The midcentury novelist read anew, on war’s aftermath and transatlantic romance. What was, or is, « postwar Europe », anyway?

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  • Of human children & language children

    Of human children & language children

    The first word I ever wrote was stsikukha: « pisser ». This is how my nanny Frosya called me to my face. On poetry and pathos in a bastard tongue.

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