Exile is a grave. Historical epochs, things and peoples vanish in it. Yet, often they are suddenly back in the…
Beat Mazenauer
In his novel Compass, the well-travelled polyglot and writer Mathias Enard develops a counter-programme to the populist mainstream of being ‘anti-’open…
Between Two Cultures The favourite prediction about the ‘conflict of cultures’ is an ideological construct that quickly loses obvious meaning…
Barbarianism Without End Culture is a thin varnish covering the chasms of barbarianism. Disasters churn it up; they are the…
Magic Reportage In the books written by Hans Christoph Buch, the sun often gleams from a blank sky. He has…
In The Invisible Cities (Le Città invisibili), Italo Calvino wrote, “The hell of the living is not something that will be”.…