New York Review Books Has an Amazing Forthcoming List
I’ve been a huge fan of NYRB for years. I think I even have copies of the first twelve/thirteen books in those very unfortunately designed covers. Every season I drool when their catalog arrives. I’ve been planning a post for weeks entitled “Albert Cossery is Effing Awesome,” which is due in part to ...
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TLS on Georges Simenon
Two startlingly similar short novels appeared in France in 1942, at the centre of each a conscienceless and slightly creepy young man, unattached and adrift, the perpetrator of a meaningless murder. One was Albert Camus’s L’Étranger, the other Georges Simenon’s La Veuve Couderc. Camus’s novel rose to become part ...
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Why Simenon Isn't Popular in the U.S.
The Guardian has a blog post today about Georges Simenon, praising the roman durs and speculating on his popularity: This relentlessly downbeat canon (the one exception among his straight novels was The Little Saint, which was very loosely based on the life of Marc Chagall) may be one reason why Simenon’s work has ...
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Words Without Borders
The September Issue of Words Without Borders is now online and features Portuguese writing from Portugal, Mozambique, Angola, and Brazil, “with Jose Eduardo Agualusa, Rosa Alice Branco, Alexander Cuadros, Mia Couto, Manoel de Barros, Augusta Faro, Rubem Fonseca, Teolinda Gersao, Milton Hatoum, Conceicao Lima, Alberto ...
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The Engagement
At least in terms of output, Georges Simenon is a Herculean writer. He makes Joyce Carol Oates look like a slacker, having written over 400 novels and short story collections in his lifetime. And if that weren’t enough, he added to his mythic stature through fun games like this: In 1927, Georges Simenon, the ...
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