Bitter Searching of the Heart
Villanelle for Our Time From bitter searching of the heart, Quickened with passion and with pain We rise to play …
Category Archives: Art & Culture
Trumbo: On the Black List for Being Red
Yep. Go see it. Good, straight-ahead story, mixed fabulously well with archival footage of the era – the ’40s and …
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 …
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 …
Halima’s Path: Love, Neighbors, Enemies and Loss in the Bosnian War
I prefer movies that immerse me in the real world, rather than those which provide distraction, through song and dance, fanciful fictions or …
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 …
My Mañana Comes: Back of the House on Stage
On the enthusiastic recommendation of a friend, four of us collected ourselves to see the Marin Theater Company’s presentation of …
Taxi — A Forbidden Film from Iran
Jaffar Panahi’s Taxi, an entry at the recent Mill Valley Film Festival has made it into at least limited distribution in …
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 …