I’m writing this in an Indian restaurant. The only Indian in my Finnish town is at the railway station – there are more Nepalese around here. This one is at the railway station, and, like today, I often come here…
I’m writing this in an Indian restaurant. The only Indian in my Finnish town is at the railway station – there are more Nepalese around here. This one is at the railway station, and, like today, I often come here…
These women wrote through the darkest times. As times get darker again, 80 to 90 years later, we need to read them. The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Salvation of Philosophy (Allen Lane 2023) in Shaun Whiteside’s English…
It shouldn’t frustrate me so much that a German book has an English title, but it does. This frustration encapsulates some of the struggle for intersectional justice that Emilie Roig exposes. So often concepts and terms are honed in English,…
Is this a road trip or a journey back in time? The German and English covers of Töchter/Daughters tell the same story in different ways. Just getting into the car and driving south to get away from it all –…
A fellow queer Christian, from an utterly different context. Indonesian literature has been in the literary news since the country guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015. But now it gets personal: Sergius Seeks Bacchus. This slim…
Something is happening in French-language literature right now that makes me dearly regret stopping at GCSE. In the last few months I’ve devoured three short and piercingly acute new translations from French that have made me think hard about animal…
Maresi is home from the abbey. She has left her sisters behind. She has left the horror of death behind too, it seems. It isn’t easy coming home. The journey is hard, and long. And when she gets there, the…
An odd choice for Valentine’s Day, perhaps? Bear with me, you’ll see. In Blake’s image, a woman powered with sunlight faces down a dragon. This ultimate battle between good and evil from the Book of Revelation is the cover image…
Finland turns 100 today. Although it’s the darkest and coldest time of the year, consuming the hottest chilli you can get your hands on might not be the obvious way to celebrate. Until you read this book and understand how horribly…