The European Review of Books

Why people make friends? What makes friend a friend? Where do enemies come from? The Catalan philosopher Marina Garcés is after this sort of clarity in her essay here: europeanreviewofbooks.com/the-passion-...

@senarclens.bsky.social

Looted libraries - The European Review of Books « In both countries, it has left the government officials grappling with an extremely delicate and complex issue. Why is it so difficult to move forward? »

Vanessa de Senarclens' essay starts with a journey to the University Library in Łódź, Poland, and a book that doesn’t want to behave like a regular library book: a German Bible with a bullet hole in its spine. europeanreviewofbooks.com/looted-libra...

Ukraine yesterday & tomorrow - The European Review of Books Ukraine didn’t become an epicenter of world history all of a sudden; it became an epicenter again.

« The meaning of the essay changed from draft01 to draft10, as did the world order. As did everything, » wrote Oksana Forostyna, revisiting the essay she first drafted in 2021 and rewrote again and again as Russia’s full-scale invasion unfolded 4 years ago. europeanreviewofbooks.com/ukraine-yest...

I wrote a special letter for @europeanreview.bsky.social readers. It is a special magazine and I know it has special readers around the world. It is like letters I’ve written in Nation of Strangers and I’m expecting replies;) Your letters will be published as well. Perhaps it is time we connect. 🕊️

A letter from - The European Review of Books « Even if you feel at home in time and space today, you know that you are already in mourning for the future loss of everything that is beautiful. This is the first time humanity is mourning in the fu...

« I've written many letters to the strangers of this world we are living in. This one is special to ERB readers, who I know feel like strangers to our times, the cruelty and the insanity of it. » A letter from @ecetemelkuran.bsky.social, everyone: europeanreviewofbooks.com/a-letter-from/

Paragraph of text with the word paradoxical in focus. It starts with a special p, unlike other words, like place, in the same paragraph, indicating it must be a deliberate choice of the typographer

Bookmark and page ripper in one on sunlit-strewn page 53 of issue 10 of the ERB

ERB is always a delight in both content and form. Love stumbling across typographical easter eggs like the paradoxical 𝒫 here

Also issue 10 comes with a gorgeous celebratory bookmark & page ripper

#EuropeanReviewOfBooks @europeanreview.bsky.social

Saving the angel - The European Review of Books « This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and h...

George Prochnik’s piece « Saving the Angel » links Israel-Palestine’s broken geography, Paul Klee’s angels, and Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of history. Past catastrophe surges into the present. europeanreviewofbooks.com/saving-the-a...

In « A Woman in Tangiers », Ines Weizman gives us a sneak peek into her practice of Documentary Architecture: the art of examining archival images for what they tell us about a vanished time or place. It's here for you to read: europeanreviewofbooks.com/a-woman-in-t...

The political life of dreams - The European Review of Books « Dreams could show an internalization of oppression just as easily as a resistance to oppression — which would mean a dream isn't so free a realm after all. »

Who have you been dreaming about? Even asleep, we remain citizens. Christy Wampole’s review essay « The Political Life of Dreams », from Issue Ten, addresses exactly that. europeanreviewofbooks.com/the-politica...

What Sweden is, not - The European Review of Books « Once the most social democratic country in Europe, and then, in the 1990s, the most neoliberal one, Sweden now aims to become the most nationalist one. »

In his review-essay, Martin Gelin puts the kulturkanon alongside Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh’s Är svensken människa? (« Is the Swede Human? », 2006). So we start by figuring out who « a Swede » is. Is the Swede human? Apparently. europeanreviewofbooks.com/what-sweden-...

In her review-essay of The West: The History of an Idea (by Greek historian Georgios Varouxakis) Oksana Forostyna is mapping The West's West and the rest's West.
europeanreviewofbooks.com/the-wests-we...

Can AI have a headache? That’s the question @sanderpleij.bsky.social opens Issue Ten with — an essay that wonders what AI and the Vatican might have to say to one another. europeanreviewofbooks.com/can-ai-have-...

ISSUE 👏 TEN 👏 IS 👏 OUT! Black on white, with a glint of copper. Already available for our circle of members.
europeanreviewofbooks.com/issues/issue...

Here’s a fragment of a dual-text poem by Karim Kattan, a Palestinian novelist, essayist and poet from Bethlehem who lives in France. « Alors, tue-le » is an exquisite wrenching poem raw with internalized self-violence. Read it all both in English and French. europeanreviewofbooks.com/so-kill-him-...

Fables of wickedness for a liquid Europe - The European Review of Books A story about traps

Borders, walls, cages, swimming pools, bullets, ears, pickaxes: in Gonçalo Tavares’s fable of a « liquid Europe », Europe's hopes for order, beauty or mercy end up as new ways of control. It's a story of traps. europeanreviewofbooks.com/fables-of-wi...

MEET THE ERB TEAM. The Issue 10 will come out soon, so we're getting in the Jubilee vibe already. In fact, we’re looking for more readers to join our peculiar Europe's stage of ideas, essays, pearls, vignettes and more. Support us – we bring gifts: europeanreviewofbooks.com/ten-issues-in/

In « The plant whisperers » is sort of a plant-travelogue, in which Kapka Kassabova follows the foragers, herbalists, and mushroom-hunters of Bulgaria — people who speak « plant language ». What a journey: europeanreviewofbooks.com/the-plant-wh...

Russian state media seized on the moment, turning her into a propaganda icon of supposed Ukrainian oppression.
But « Babushka Z » was not a Russian patriot, but a scared and confused great-grandma trying to appease soldiers by waving a Soviet flag. Here: europeanreviewofbooks.com/babushka-z-c...

My untranslatable name - The European Review of Books When my parents went to register my name after I was born, they carried out an especially elaborate plan. They acquired a chocolate bar

Names carry their own geographies — small worlds of language, memory, and resistance. In his essay, Szabolcs László writes about one such name — his own, and the history it refused to lose. europeanreviewofbooks.com/my-untransla...

So interesting and reminds me of the time I took a German English teacher friend to see Letter to Brezhnev / He understood hardly any of it…Am so enjoying @europeanreview.bsky.social

Here are six poems by Ukrainian poet Olesya Mamchych on war's long arc — from over hundred years of imperialism flowing over the border, to the war in Donbas in 2014, and full-scale invasion in 2022. Alongside that comes the persistence of love.
europeanreviewofbooks.com/honorable-me...

10.000 — help! we have success ✨

Our newsletter just passed 10,000 readers (now 10,600!) — from Europe, Canada, India… hello India! 🇮🇳
So happy.
We focused on quality writing + design, then got new team members, and now we’re growing fast — I may need to come back soon with a second crowdfunding…

Carry The Prophet In Your Coat Pocket - The European Review of Books When you’re fifteen and you read Kahlil Gibran’s mystical bestseller for the first time.

In this one, Jonas Hassen Khemiri re-visits Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. It is, more generally, also about re-visiting (or pointedly not re-visiting) those books that happened to stamp themselves on our earlier selves.
europeanreviewofbooks.com/carry-the-pr...

Of trotting horses & angelic words - The European Review of Books I was reminded of Muybridge’s moving pictures while looking at the serial attempts of Ambrogio Lorenzetti (d. 1348/49) at rendering the invisible visible.

Cinema history meets medieval art history meets a theologico-metaphysical question about sound itself. Here's an essay by Marisa Libbon. europeanreviewofbooks.com/of-trotting-...

My tongue is Simón Bolívar's wet dream - The European Review of Books My boyfriend had colombianized my Mexican. But my friends had also argentinized it, chileanized it, venezuelized it, ecuadorized it.

Your Spanish, my Spanish, our Spanish — along with that r curling off the tongue. Nora Muñiz’s essay asks what happens when a language translates itself into different versions — and somehow lands as the European Review of « Coge The Bus ». europeanreviewofbooks.com/my-tongue-is...

Child Kings - The European Review of Books « Time is a child playing draughts; the kingship is a child’s. »

What kingship does to a little dude, and what a little dude does to kingship? « Child Kings », a pearl by Marek Maj.
europeanreviewofbooks.com/short-kings/

In war-torn Ukraine, trains still run like clockwork. How can such an impossibly efficient system hold together while Russia bombs cities and infrastructure daily? That’s the story in « Glory to the rails » — a review by Oksana Forostyna. Read here: europeanreviewofbooks.com/glory-to-the...

The Doomsday Clock once meant nuclear war. In After Midnight, Alexander Etkind & Johanna Gautier-Morin trace catastrophic learning and how today’s « pluralistic » disasters arrive « without a bang but with a thousand whimpers ». Read it here: europeanreviewofbooks.com/after-midnig...

Latest issue of @europeanreview.bsky.social has interesting piece on learning from catastrophe by @sashaetkind.bsky.social and @johannagautier.bsky.social with a letter in response from me #ClimateResponsibility #Louisiana #climateimpacts