For a brief moment, in 1917, the Russian peasantry could be optimistic about its future. With the overthrow of the tsar, Russia’s large estates were seized by peasant farmers: “108 million acres were taken from 110,000 landlords,” to the point […]
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons
by on June 14, 2019
In university and in the many years since my graduation, I have had the repeated and uncomfortable experience of encountering human beings incapable of uttering an original thought. Otherwise intelligent, rational people, once confronted with a given political or philosophical […]
Virginia Woolf’s The Moment And Other Essays
by on May 30, 2019
In the last three or four years of trawling used book stores, estate sales and library fundraisers, no single find has been more felicitous than a complete set of Virginia Woolf’s essays, in such pristine condition as if they had […]
Clarice Lispector’s Complete Stories
by on May 26, 2019
Not even five years ago now, the name of Clarice Lispector was everywhere. A new biography and English translations of her most popular works were rescuing her from a provincial obscurity her talent was always destined to transcend, finding her […]
Russell Kirk’s The Roots Of American Order
by on May 22, 2019
Conservative philosopher Russell Kirk’s opus on American “order” appeared in 1974, a year of remarkable disorder: Vietnam divided the nation, university protests disrupted classes and frequently drew the attentions of the National Guard, and Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. The […]
Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped
by on May 9, 2019
Jesmyn Ward first came to my attention through her 2011 interview in The Paris Review, where she boldly staked her claim not to the parochial concerns of race or gender – however valuable these may be – but to the […]
José Saramago’s Blindness
by on May 5, 2019
Before his death in 2010, at the age of 87, the Portuguese novelist José Saramago was one of the world’s most decorated writers, winner of both the Nobel Prize and the prestigious America Award. His books have sold millions of […]
John Williams’ Nothing But The Night
by on April 16, 2019
My infatuation with John Williams continues, this time with his first novel, Nothing But The Night, written when he was just 22 years old, stationed in Burma during the Second World War. Even that statement downplays the conditions of its […]
Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God
by on April 11, 2019
A gulf has opened up, within the Western world, between those who believe that religion ought to have a role in determining the political ends pursued by a nation, and those who have done everything in their power to restrain […]
Ryszard Kapuściński’s The Emperor
by on April 7, 2019
Who was Ryszard Kapuściński? The small biography appended to the end of The Emperor is admittedly terse: “Ryszard Kapuściński was born in 1932. During four decades reporting on Asia, Latin America, and Africa, he befriended Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, and […]
Mircea Eliade’s A History Of Religious Ideas (Vol.1)
by on March 29, 2019
In my continuing effort to shore up the glaring gaps in my education, I arrived at the work of Mircea Eliade, perhaps the 20th century’s most famous scholar of religion. Born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1907, Eliade manifested an early […]
Victor Sebestyen’s Lenin
by on March 27, 2019
Every year, some two million people visit Moscow’s Red Square, in the very centre of the city, to gaze on the preserved corpse of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by his adopted name: Lenin. This ghastly presentation was a fate […]
Alexander Herzen’s My Past & Thoughts
by on March 21, 2019
By a happy accident, I began reading a modern biography of Vladimir Lenin, architect of the Soviet Union, just as I was finishing up the memoirs of another Russian revolutionary, Alexander Herzen, and the similarities and dissimilarities between the two […]
John Gray’s Straw Dogs
by on March 11, 2019
John Gray is an English philosopher, and the former “School Professor of European Thought” at the London School of Economics. He came to my attention thanks to his very public spate with Steven Pinker, conducted over the course of years, […]
Charles D’Ambrosio’s The Dead Fish Museum
by on March 4, 2019
Prior to reading The Dead Fish Museum, Charles D’Ambrosio was to me only a name, vaguely familiar but with the unreality of rumour. I had read nothing he had written, nor seen him recommended by the writers and critics I’m […]