It’s that time of year again: the time when everyone obsesses over lists and gets deeply frustrated if someone else’s list is different from their own. And in keeping with that delightful spirit, prepare to get frustrated by our list of best translated novels of 2019! In all seriousness, though, I love a good list. …
European Literature
Rather than digging into the necessary and fascinating history surrounding Every Fire You Tend right off the bat, it’s perhaps more important to lead with this: Every Fire You Tend is an astonishing work of art. An experimental piece of storytelling that blends fact and fiction, history and folklore, religious parables and superstitions, to create …
Translated from the Czech by Paul Wilson I had never read any of Hrabal’s poetry or prose before this book, which makes All My Cats an interesting place to start, being a non-fiction confession of sorts. All My Cats is a sliver of a book that recounts, with great pain and suffocating guilt, an ageing …
Language is highly politicised, it can be used as a weapon, used against us — as we’ve seen time and again in our current political climate. The simple use of a certain language or dialect can also be a dangerous, rebellious, or illegal act the world over. Both today and throughout history, people have died …
So many of our greatest stories of terror and the supernatural come from faraway lands. A nation’s laws, customs, traditions, politics, and religion will have a profound effect on what kinds of stories they want to tell. Horror is a magnificent genre that takes heavy themes, chews them up, and spits them out as something …
Many of us were disappointed when that letter never came. You know the one. But being part of the Harry Potter world, wearing Harry Potter clothes, visiting the studios and theme parks, rereading the books and discussing them with friends — all of this is just as magical as heading to Hogwarts yourself. And far …
Ellen’s father was a man psychologically damaged. And though the details of that damage are never made clear, it had a grave impact on his family — on Ellen, her actress mother, and her older brother. That is, until his sudden death which occurs in his sleep in a hospital bed. Ellen blames herself for …
Saul Adler is an unlikeable protagonist, which is a rarity in modern fiction. When I first read Wuthering Heights, upon my partner’s request, I complained about how everyone is unlikeable. She pointed out that it’s part of the fun, and I began enjoying the book from a different angle. The same cannot be said about …
If there’s one TV show that captures the tone, atmosphere, and grandeur of high-class living in pre-modern Britain, it’s Downton Abbey. The show encapsulated not only the day-to-day lives, relationships, and dramas of the English gentry of the time, but also the lives of their servants, cooks, and drivers. It blended real-world events with political …
Ah, Paris. The world’s most romantic city could never be called truly romantic if it wasn’t for its legendary literature, powerful feminists, and groundbreaking philosophers. But before you visit Paris, there’s a lot you can learn. There is so much depth and beauty to Paris’ art, architecture, cuisine, and literary scene that it’s only fair …