Empire Then, Empire Now
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ve been re-reading this justly famous novel …
Category Archives: Books
The Wound: Algeria then, Afghanistan now…
The Wound /Des Hommes, is an absolutely remarkable novel from Laurent Mauvignier, his seventh [now up to eleven] in the …
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
After you have read The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross you will never hear concert …
1914: Slender Novel, Big War
Although Jean Echenoz is both widely read and a winner of multiple literary prizes in France you’d have to …
A Test of Wills — Solving Small Crimes not the Big Ones
A Test of Wills, (1996) by Charles Todd is the first of what has become a series of some seventeen novels featuring Inspector …
The Great Swindle: Opportunities in France, 1919
Pierre Lemaitre has won a substantial following both in his native France and abroad for writing crime fiction. His Commandant Camille …
Zinky Boys: Russian Dead in Foreign Lands
Zinky Boys, Svetlana Alexievich‘s third book, and the third about war, reveals in it’s flip, bitter title, the pervading feeling …
A Poet and His Work, In Film
Poetry in film, now there’s a small sub-genre of the movie world. Hayden Reiss‘s long labor of love, Robert Bly: …
Robert Bly, Poet, Crying Out….
I saw a wonderful documentary film the other day, titled Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy, about which more …
Democracy and the Demagogue
Jason Stanley, author of the much praised How Propaganda Works, takes a look at the current political season and how …
Economics: Prizing Plain Talk on Inequality
Angus Deaton, variously described as a Scotsman, a Briton and a Princeton economist has just been awarded the The Sveriges Riksbank Prize …
Places Without Names — A Poem by Philip Booth
“Places Without Names” by Philip Booth in After the Storm: Poems on the Persian Gulf War editors Jay Meek and …