Life A User’s Manual
1 The life of the Perec family (the family name was originally Peretz) was one of removals. The Perecs moved from one city to another in Poland before leaving Poland for France. Georges was born in France in 1936 and against the background of troubled times the exact details of his early life are lost. His father was one of ...
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The Post-Office Girl
In their usual classy-as-hell manner, New York Review Books delivered a real gem last month in the 2008 Reading the World selection THE POST-OFFICE GIRL, by Stefan Zweig and translated by Joel Rotenberg. Zweig’s posthumously published book is bitter, brutal, and everything I love about post-war literature while still ...
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The Rivers of Babylon
Ortega y Gasset wrote of those who had stepped onto the stage of history and did not belong there. Vertical invaders he called them. Those who had come up from below. Cowboy capitalists and tinhorn dictators who elbowed the nobility, church and founding fathers aside. In Peter Pistanek’s version, the peasant from the ...
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Latest Review: Hotel Crystal
Our latest review is by Kelly Amabile—of the fantastic Book Culture book store in NYC. She takes a look at Olivier Rolin’s Hotel ...
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Hotel Crystal
One need not be a world traveler or international spy to enjoy Olivier Rolin’s Hotel Crystal, but the allure and intrigue of both take center stage in this cleverly crafted antinovel-cum-travelogue. French novelist and journalist Olivier Rolin chooses another “Olivier Rolin” to play the starring role in this collection ...
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The Have-Nots
At the outset, I didn’t particularly care for this book. Yet, as a work of fiction, The Have-Nots bears no great deficiencies and has, in fact, a certain charm to it. In spite of this, or, perhaps, because of it, I can’t love this book. Perhaps my heart is too small to embrace the multitude of characters, or perhaps my ...
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The Waitress Was New
The Waitress Was New is the first of French author Dominique Fabre’s novels to be translated into English. The novel is narrated by Pierre, a 56-year-old bartender who has been tending bar his entire adult life, more or less, and has spent the last eight years working at Le Cercle, a typical French café situated ...
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