Welcome to July’s Riveting Reviews.
We’ve had to step aside for a while, due mainly to the embarrassment of riches which was our Italian Riveter content. You can see our wealth of reviews (riveting, naturalmente) of Italian books in translation online, or you can still pick up a print copy via Newsstand.
While we’ve been standing in the wings, our regular contributors have been busy, which means multiple reviews from many of them.
Our resident poet, Anna Blasiak, reviews two poetry books this month: a fascinating piece of concrete poetry by Astrid Alben, plus Astrid’s translation (the first in English) of a collection by the Netherlands’ poet laureate, Anne Vegter.
Anna also reviews something close to our ELNet hearts: an account of one Slovak woman’s experiences in the turbulent twentieth century; a woman with a special connection to an ELNet member and regular contributor …
Ewa Sherman is back, reviewing, once again, the great Serge Joncour, as well as a novel by Faïza Guène appropriate for the sixtieth anniversary of Algeria’s war of independence from France.
Paul Burke returns too, with reviews of two books following young people overcoming difficulties – the first by Jeanne Benameur, set in a forest in France, the second by Ewald Arenz, set in a rural idyll in southern Germany.
Max Easterman provides two thrilling reviews as well this month, of masters of the Nordic Noir genre, David Lagercrantz and Kjell Ola Dahl.
Rosie Goldsmith reviews for us once again, taking on an account of the little-known Nazi crime of ‘aryanisaton’ – in which Jewish writers had their copyright and works stolen and republished under ‘German’ names.
Finally, our erstwhile Italianist Katherine Gregor reviews a fascinating collection of poems, some authored by and some translated by Boris Dralyuk. As a great summer bonus Katherine also interviews Dralyuk about his life, his work and the collection.
Enjoy our summer selection of Riveting Reviews. Please like, tag, post and tweet them widely on social media. And if you’re minded to purchase any of the books, please do so via our devoted Bookshop.org Riveting Reviews page. We’ll get a tiny commission on your purchase, which will help ELNet continue its work.
Our next set of reviews will be published at the end of September. If you’d like to contribute a review, please read our guidelines, and send your review ideas to reviews@eurolitnetwork.com.
Wishing all our readers a wonderful literary summer.
—West Camel