#RivetingReviews: Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese reviews A LITTLE TOUR THROUGH EUROPEAN POETRY by John Taylor
Don’t be misled by the adjective ‘little’ – Taylor’s ‘little’ tour takes us across 288 pages of 34 essays; across Europe expanded for the purpose by Turkey and Russia; a tour taken through poetry but including fiction. The sheer scope of this literary travelogue is a joy. Who i
As I work my way through an anthology – any anthology really – I almost always find myself struck less by the individual stories I’m reading and more by the overall picture that is painted; the set of concerns to which each writer contributes. While Twelve Winning Authors 2017 is no exception
A boy grows up in Rotterdam, in a family that seems to weld the fiendish with the angelic, tragedy with bliss, pure reason with the utterly irrational, brutal instinctiveness with the trauma of exile, ethnic and religious persecution, dire poverty, the yearning for kindness and the burden of loss. O
This is one of those books you could devour in a few hours but which then baits the mind for a long time afterwards with the question ‘What was it really about?’ The writing style of this novella might suggest a quick read, but slow savouring is much more rewarding. The Parisian lawyer Pierre-Fr
When I meet her for the first time, Dulce Maria Cardoso had blue hair, which ofcourse I question her about: why? Why not? she replies, but I’d rather you consider my writing than my appearance. You can hardly ignore someone with blue hair, though, I thought, especially when it is attached to a bea
Taut and tense, a thrilling and very black read: Elena Varvello’s successful Italian novel from 2016, her first in English (in a faultless translation by Alex Valente) is all these things. However, it is not merely a ‘noir thriller’, as the cover quotes nudge us to believe. It is much more and
