Giannis Paschos: Not necessarily in the right order
LITTLE COULD THIS dyslexic boy, growing up in a small mountainous village in Epirus in the 1960s, have known that he would go on to conquer the worlds of academia and literature, with his unruly imagination as his only weapon. When his memoir Chronicles of a Dyslexic Author was published in Greek in the summer...
The nail in the wall
IT WAS SUNDAY. MÓNICA WANTED to hang a picture on the wall, a small Walter Lazzaro reproduction, and I didn’t want to. The wall wasn’t actually a wall, but one of the four square columns that delineate the perimeter of the room. It’s a narrow column, but wide enough to hang a small picture on...
Violence without motive: the caged ferocity of adolescence
ONCE I BECAME AN ADULT, I looked back and saw the teenager I had been: studious, insecure, wary of role models, unable to blend in. That young girl – with vain, golden ballet shoes on her feet – couldn’t understand her peers, and at every moment expected a sudden slap, a pocketknife pulled out, a...
Present perfect
“IT’S ABOUT TIME WE ACKNOWLEDGE IT: people are not very good at remembering things the way they really happened. If an experience is an article of clothing, then memory is the garment after it’s been washed, not according to the instructions, over and over again: the colors fade, the size shrinks, the original, nostalgic scent...
My mother’s war
DRIVING HER 2CV BACK TO PARIS through the gloomy forests of the Oise, Lucie imagined the dialogue at her trial:“Have you ever been a Nazi?”“Of course! I was a very happy Nazi.”“You really were a Nazi?”“Why not?”“Do you know, you are the very first person we have ever heard confess to it.”Lucie imagined the entire...
A visit in my room
I HEARD A KNOCK ON THE DOOR, and quickly put my notebook under the mattress. I thought that lunch was over and that one of the orderlies had come to call me to the second part of the therapeutic conversations. But no: when I opened the door, Martin Amis was standing there. “May I come...
Beyond language
Indeterminate Inflorescence is a collection of aphorisms on poetry-writing taken from the creative writing lectures of Lee Seong-bok, one of South Korea’s most prominent living poets. These 470 meditations, collected by his students, are evocative micro-poems in their own right. Some express ideas at once familiar and breathtakingly new – truths we could sense but not put...
Without a trace
Ariel dragged himself out of bed and went to the kitchen. He wanted to sleep some more, but couldn’t. Books and newspapers were scattered everywhere in the living room. He had to tidy up. It took seven steps to get to the little kitchen. He opened the big silver refrigerator and stood there perplexed, as...
Meeting Monsieur
Drawing on Victor Hugo’s cryptic diary entries and letters from his wife, Catherine Axelrad’s Célina builds a snapshot of a teenage chambermaid in the Hugo household during the author’s exile in Guernsey, who was apparently prey to the great man’s gargantuan sexual appetites. With a mix of mischief, naivety, pragmatism and curiosity, Célina’s account of...
The new censor
The new censor was late to his office. He had stood too long, rooted to the ground in front of the Censorship Authority building, trying to guess the number of floors it contained. A few meters from the entrance, counting on his fingers, he was certain there were at least thirty-six floors. But the elevator...
A time for reading
It is the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday in March. She has just woken up from a nap. The snow is no longer falling but its brightness is still being projected onto the ceiling of their apartment. It is rather lovely. The cat is watching her from a pouffe opposite the sofa with...
Elsa Drucaroff, Rodolfo Walsh and Argentina
The years of the military Junta cast a very long shadow in Argentina, and it’s thoroughly poignant that Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case appears in English just as the country has taken a swerve in a desperate new direction. I had never heard of Rodolfo Walsh. That was put right by Slava Faybysh when he brought...
