We are only now entering the second decade of the 21st century, but already it seems obvious that the salient force shaping world politics will be human migration. The shrinking populations of the global north have and will continue to […]
Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky: The Years Of Ordeal, 1850-1859
by on November 24, 2019
When we last left off, after the first volume of Joseph Frank’s multi-volume account of the life and times of Fyodor Dostoevsky, our author was on the verge of arrest by the tsar’s secret police for his involvement in an […]
J.M. Coetzee’s The Schooldays Of Jesus
by on November 16, 2019
The Schooldays of Jesus was, for me, an impulse buy, purchased purely on the strength of my esteem for J.M. Coetzee, whom I regard as one of the greatest living fiction writers, but my enthusiasm – at least in this […]
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot
by on October 31, 2019
My Dostoevsky infatuation continues, this time with the second of his major novels, written while he was on the run from creditors, living in Switzerland with his second wife. The Idiot is the only one of Dostoevsky’s novels written while […]
William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days
by on October 20, 2019
To begin with, a confession: I have an abiding fear of the ocean. That fear has not prevented me from swimming in ocean waters – albeit close to the shores – or venturing out in boats of various sizes, either […]
Michel Houellebecq’s Platform
by on September 30, 2019
I am not a superstitious person, nor do I have any faith in the supernatural, but I believe some rare figures throughout history have had the gift of prophecy. Doubtless their fortunetelling owes more to some heightened intellectual sensitivity than […]
Mircea Eliade’s A History Of Religious Ideas (Vol.2)
by on September 26, 2019
For most of my adult life, I have had no use or patience for religion. I was raised outside of the church, never inducted into any religious tradition, and therefore – like so many of my generation – I came […]
Stephen Smith’s The Scramble For Europe
by on September 15, 2019
Stephen Smith’s La Ruée Vers L’Europe was the talk of Paris upon its publication in France last year, and it is poised to be no less explosive in the English-speaking world after the June release of the English translation, The […]
Paul Auster’s Winter Journal
by on September 10, 2019
Given pages enough, and time, how would you organize the story of your life? Would you begin sensibly, that is to say, chronologically, from infancy into adulthood? Or would you perhaps single out the most impactful moments, the most important […]
Nikos Kazantzakis’ Zorba The Greek
by on August 31, 2019
One of the oldest of our mythological dichotomies is between the rational, contemplative Apollonian and the sensuous, emotive Dionysian. In literature, the former are more often brooding melancholics, patterned on Prince Hamlet, while the latter are typically depicted as Falstaffian […]