Written on Water
These essays are talks over coffee and catching up after a long week. They are close friends talking about the issues that matter to them and the parts of the past still stuck to the hem of their clothes.
2023
2023 CE.
2023 is the publication year for the editions below.
You can view all years of edition, or you can search by language/region, genre, era/movement, book authors, or editor/translator.
Dorothy Parker in Hollywood
I came late to the work of Dorothy Parker and I came to it in a piecemeal way that I think many modern readers come to it. Honestly, I knew more about the saga of Parker’s mortal remains being stored in a filing cabinet for decades than I did about her.
The Lover
While the book is called The Lover, I would argue that it’s not much about the lover at all.
Blue
Partly prose and partly poetry, in Blue Jarman explores what it means to be in a body that is failing with mind that is still full of life and wonder.
Our Philosopher
I have read many novels written from a child’s perspective, but this is one of the best. It is very challenging for an adult writer to capture the uncertainly and bewilderment of childhood, and Hofmann has done so beautifully.
Jolly Festive, Jeeves
I was expecting, based on the title, to get a collection of purely Christmas, party, winter holiday, or holiday stories here. Instead, the book contains thirteen tales organized by month with two for December. Also? They are not all from the Jeeves and Wooster universe.
Hope Against Hope
It is essentially Nadezhda’s account of her own suffering and her country’s under the murderous, oppressive force of a dictator’s relentless purges of all opposition. Of art and culture. Of intellectuals and anyone who got in his way or was inconvenient.
Siblings
Elisabeth is supposedly fully invested in the GDR and stubbornly sees it as the way to some kind of utopian realization of equality for all. However, her doubts have started to creep in.
The Fire Within
He has been institutionalized and addicted to drugs for quite some time, and he feels that he is on the verge of losing his looks and his status as he continues to fail to meet expectations.
Murder in the Age of Enlightenment
Though the subjects are varied, what remains is Akutagawa’s beautiful starkness and his precise use of prose. There is the feeling that cutting one word would be impossible, but adding one would be a shame.