Literature
On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino
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On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino, newly translated: a Q&A with Alexander Chee.
The cemetery-goer
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On the travels of Karl-Markus Gauß, and the unlikely guardians of the dream of Europe.
Beamer, Dressman, Bodybag
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On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish & global Englisch. « My own language, made camp. »
Doom is in the details
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Floods, hailstorms, plague, fire, children lost on a mountain or trapped for years in a ruined villa. On the stories of Adalbert Stifter.
The pulverization of memory
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Write your memoir in a hostile tongue. On Marina Jarre, from Latvia to Italy and back.
An archeology of the air
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On Havelok the Dane, medieval air & the world’s largest wind farm
WHOOOO
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A story about a lonely railway guard on a desolate steppe. « In the cursed August of 1991 the radio informed Kasatonov that there was a state of emergency in the capital. Then it fell silent, as if the receiver had broken. »
When the world makes rags of us
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He spoke of painting like a starving man speaks of food. On Józef Czapski, Memories of Starobielsk and the art of observation.
Flags & bones
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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?