May 2013

  The words of the criminally insane always bring a unique perspective. "George Letham: Physician and Murderer" is a translation of the chilling German novel that follows George Letham, a physician who is baffled by his own actions as a doctor

from Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Issue 84, No. 1, 2012 136-137 by Jason Weiss Published in 1972, Prose del observatorio was unique in Cortázar’s oeuvre both for its subject and form, while remaining true to his indomitable spirit. In

  Shape Notes: On “Fossil Sky” by David Hinton Reading David Hinton’s poem “Fossil Sky” is no simple matter. This “lyrical map,” as the author calls it, spirals its way around a 54 square-inch sheet of paper. There’s no up or down,

  The CircaËte, or Snake Eagle, endemic to the CÈvennes, subsists entirely on snakes, especially the grass snake (according to Oiseaux.net). A reader of David Hinton’s Fossil Sky will learn this in the notes glossing the name of a bird, whose cries of

  "The Turkish Ulysses. . . . Tanpinar’s great novel also unfolds over 24-hours, but in Istanbul on the eve of World War II. Turkey is torn between East and West just as Mümtaz, an orphan and aspiring writer of historical

  Originally published in 1949, Tanpinar's sweeping literary masterpiece is a love story of his native Turkey and of the flesh. As Turkish culture shifts from its traditional roots to a more modernized society in the 1930s, protagonist Mümtaz seeks to

Review of Diaries of Exile from World Literature Today Review of Diaries of Exile from Andrew Horton, World Literature Today   Yannis Ritsos. Diaries of Exile. Karen Emmerich & Edmund Keeley, tr. Brooklyn, New York. Archipelago. 2013. isbn 9781935744580   Yannis Ritsos (1909–1990) was one of

  Angels have always eluded mankind. A Time for Everything is the tale of a sixteenth century boy by the name of Antinous Bellori and his encounters with angels. Norwegian author Karl O. Knausgaard drew upon much of the tales of

  Humanity and the Divine: A Time for Everything Long before the back and forth between religion and science, literature has been an irritant and a helpmate to belief. Because the continual transmission of spiritual practices relies on the transformative power of

  Angelic Disorder "For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we just barely endure and we admire it so because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every angel is dreadful." — Rainer Maria Rilke, The Duino Elegies "One can provoke