Culture | Books, Music, Theatre, Film & The Arts

Joszef Stalin: a flattering or emollient portrayal was not forthcoming from Comrade Krzhizhanovsky

Reviewed: Unwitting Street by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

The work of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is clever, playful and erudite in the way that the fiction of Flann O'Brien also is, being similarly surreal in its satire.

Book Review • 13 Oct 20

Samuel Beckett: Sonnenberg once told him a joke which he heard years later the Irishman was still trying to translate into French, not long before his death in 1989

Reviewed: Lost Property by Ben Sonnenberg

Son of a wealthy NY art collector, Ben Sonnenberg (1936-2010) spent much time in Europe - Spain, England, France and Greece - while meeting people like Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett. His reissued memoir is a zestfully engaging work.

Books • 20 Aug 20

Graciliano Ramos: his literary legacy is still a big deal in his native Brazil

Reviewed: São Bernardo by Graciliano Ramos

Almost seventy years after his death, the works of Graciliano Ramos (1892-1953) are hugely popular in his native Brazil and São Bernardo shows an intuitive understanding of rural society in the country's North-East in the 1930s, based on life experience.

Books • 06 Jun 20

Billie Holiday (1915-1959) seen through the eyes of Elizabeth Hardwick in The Red Thread

Book Review: The Red Thread 20 years of NYRB Classics

An itinerary or road book, rather than a 'greatest hits', according to its editor Edwin Frank, The Red Thread assembles choice cuts form 20 years of the unfailingly discerning publishing institution, NYRB Classics.

Culture • 13 Nov 19

Robert Aickman (1914-1981): his quietly spooky stories will have you mesmerised

Review: Compulsory Games by Robert Aickman

Grandson of the Victorian Gothic novelist Richard Marsh - author of the occult bestseller The Beetle - Robert Aickman did not lick it off the stones when it came to a quiet, patient spookiness in his masterful stories.

Book Review • 30 Aug 18

NYRB Classics

Reviewed: Unwitting Street by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Reviewed: Lost Property by Ben Sonnenberg

Reviewed: São Bernardo by Graciliano Ramos

Book Review: The Red Thread 20 years of NYRB Classics

Review: Compulsory Games by Robert Aickman

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