Mascara
Chilean novelist Ariel Dorfman, like many of his contemporaries, was forced into exile following the 1973 coup. Too, like many of his fellow Latin American writers, he is grossly neglected by many (if...
View ArticleThe Stone Raft
Called "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" by critic Harold Bloom, Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. This, the most fantastical of all his novels, is the...
View ArticleThe Natural Order of Things
Born in Lisbon in 1942, António Lobo Antunes is widely considered to be a strong contender for the Nobel Prize. A psychiatrist by trade, Antunes partly gave up his practice in the early 1980's...
View ArticleNew York Review Books #10: Jakob Von Gunten
Admittedly, as I read the first dozen or so pages, I wasn't sure how much I would be able to enjoy the "analytic fictional soliloquy" of a precocious teenager. It turns out, immensely. Robert Walser...
View ArticleReport from Wordstock
[Editor's Note: The Wordstock Festival overtook the city of Portland from November 6th through the 9th. Check out a photo slide show here.] With nearly 200 authors on-hand, the fourth installment of...
View ArticleFeeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile
Feeding on Dreams is a candid and powerful account of Ariel Dorfman's years in exile after he fled the horrors of the Pinochet regime in Chile. This exploration of both the immediate and lasting...
View ArticleHow Literature Saved My Life
David Shields's new book is a collagist's and lit lover's dream come true. Erudite and thoughtful, if you've ever lived or read a novel, you'll find much to admire and ruminate upon. Books mentioned in...
View ArticleOn Such a Full Sea
From the acclaimed author of Native Speaker comes a stirring new novel set in a futuristic America. With beautiful prose, Chang-rae Lee relates the captivating tale of a young woman compelled to find...
View Article2666
Completed in 2003 shortly before his death, 2666 is not only Roberto Bolaño's masterpiece but also one of the finest and most important novels of the 21st century. It's an entire world unto itself, one...
View ArticleTalking to Ourselves
Andrés Neuman possesses a formidable talent. Talking to Ourselves, despite its solemnity, is an exceptional work of considerable emotional breadth. While the story itself may well be dolorous, it...
View ArticleWidows
Following the (U.S. backed) military coup of Chilean president Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, Ariel Dorfman (until then a cultural advisor to Allende) was forced into exile. Widows was the...
View ArticleThe Monkey Wrench Gang
He's often compared to Thoreau, and one of his mottos was taken from Emerson: "resist much, obey little." While Abbey has much in common with the forefathers of environmental conservation, he certainly...
View ArticleIsland (Perennial Classics)
Published in 1962, the year before his death (which occurred on the same day JFK was assassinated), Island is the antithesis of his earlier-acclaimed Brave New World. Whereas Brave New World describes...
View ArticleThe Hour of the Star
Lispector, a Jewish, Ukraine-born Brazilian author and journalist, is much-beloved throughout the world, but is sadly under-read in the United States. Her last (and most popular) work, The Hour of the...
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