The Little Buddhist Monk & The Proof
Aira continues to surprise and delight in his latest release from New Directions, which collects two novellas: the first, The Little Buddhist Monk, a fairly recent work from 2005, and The Proof, an earlier work from 1989. There are a number of similarities to be sure—they both revolve around the sudden but intense ...
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Agnes
The narrator of Peter Stamm’s first novel, Agnes, originally published in 1998 and now available in the U.S. in an able translation by Michael Hofmann, is a young Swiss writer who has come to Chicago to research a book on American luxury trains. In the reading room of the Public Library he meets Agnes, a graduate student in ...
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Class
The thing about Class is that I don’t know what the hell to think about it, yet I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ll begin by dispensing with the usual info that one may want to know when considering adding the book to their “to read” list. Written by Francesco Pacifico. Translated by Francesco Pacifico. Published ...
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Open Letter Pop-Up at Hart's Grocery!
For the first time ever, this Saturday (July 1st), Open Letter Books will have a pop-up shop in Downtown Rochester. From 12-2 and from 4-6, we’ll be outside of Hart’s Local Grocers displaying a wide selection of our books. We’ve never done anything like this before, but since it’s the weekend of ...
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The Dispossessed
To be, or not to be? Hamlet’s enduring question is one that Szilárd Borbély, acclaimed Hungarian poet, verse-playwright, librettist, essayist, literary critic, short-story writer, and, finally, novelist, answered sadly in the negative, through his suicide in 2014, at the age of fifty. Loss of life, voluntary or ...
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Can Xue in the New Yorker!
In case you missed it, last week Can Xue was profiled in the New Yorker. This is so well-deserved—Can Xue is a treasure—and proof positive that the New Yorker has good literary taste. (Especially on the Page Turner blog.) The only other thing I want to say is that the author of this piece, Evan James, ...
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Win a Copy of "Island of Point Nemo" from Goodreads!
Coming out in August, Island of Point Nemo, Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès latest book, is an incredible trip. It’s made up of two story lines: one about the crazy (and semi-evil) workers at a ebook manufacturing plant, the other a Sherlock Holmes-style globetrotting story built out of references and allusions to all sorts ...
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