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Articles by Kai Maristed
Book Review: "Blue Light Hours" -- Unimpeachable Noticing
By Kai Maristed Bruna Dantas Lobato’s sensibility is unmistakably original: she explores her protagonist’s life and surroundings like a dowsing rod, poking into closets, corners, and cupboards. Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato. Black Cat, $17. The gifted young Brazilian translator Bruna Dantas Lobato (National Book Award for Translation, 2023) launched her own writing in English only a few years ago, to immediate success.
Book Review: "Creation Lake" -- A Jumble of Fact and Whimsical Imagination
By Kai Maristed Rachel Kushner’s latest novel is mélange of vignettes, stand-alone or linked flash essays, and portentous bits of wisdom. Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner. Scribner, NY, 404pp, $29.99. To lovers and scorekeepers of contemporary American literature, Rachel Kushner needs little introduction. After five volumes of fiction and essays, she is a two-time National Book Award finalist, once short-listed for the Booker, and this year again Booker short-listed for her sixth book, Creation Lake.
Television Review: "Kafka" -- A Gripping Biopic of the Ever-Iconic Author
By Kai Maristed What could have gone terribly wrong goes terrifically right in the hands of this creative team, culminating in a convergence of the life, the oeuvre, and our protagonist’s encroaching agony. Kafka, a six part TV series from Germany’s ARD Network. Produced by ORF, ARD, and Superfilm. Directed by David Schalko. Written by David Schalko and David Kehlmann, based on Reiner Stach’s biography of Kafka. Steaming on ChaiFlicks, starting June 6.
Book Review: "Cold Nights of Childhood" -- Impossible to Set Aside or Put Out of Mind
By Kai Maristed What sets Cold Nights of Childhood wonderfully apart from today’s autofiction genre is the narrator’s absolute lack of self-pity. There is no blame-game, and no lugubrious victimhood. Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely. Transit Books, 128 pages, $16.95. (Winner of the 2024 NBCC Barrios Prize for Literature in Translation.
Book Reviews: Peter Stamm's "The Archive of Feelings" and Bernhard Schlink's "The Grandaughter"
By Kai Maristed One wonders sometimes whether the weight of acclaim doesn’t place an author beyond critical reproach. The bandwagon effect. The Archive of Feelings by Peter Stamm. Translated from the German by Michael Hoffmann (Other Press, 192 pages) Die Enkelin (The Granddaughter) by Bernhard Schlink. (Diogenes Verlag, Switzerland, 368 pages, 2021). Here’s a recent parallel setup, in novels originally published the same year, by two very different writers.
Book Review: Daphne Kalotay's "The Archivists" -- Short Studies in Pervasive Loneliness
By Kai Maristed Daphne Kalotay’s fresh eye for the outside world is paired with a sympathy for the inner world of her protagonists, which can feel helplessly pained at times. The Archivists by Daphne Kalotay. Triquarterly, 232 pages, $20 (paperback) Daphne Kalotay is a classicist, in the grand tradition of the American short story. Fitzgerald, Updike, O’Connor, Cheever, Dubus, Baldwin… those are just a few still immensely readable names on our national shelves.
Book Review: "Epic Annette" -- What is Heroism?
By Kai Maristed Surely the selfless subject of Anne Weber’s Epic Annette qualifies beyond doubt as a true heroine of the twentieth century? Epic Annette: A Heroine’s Tale by Anne Weber. Translated from German by Tess Lewis. Indigo Press, 181 pages, £11.99. Some people experience more lives in one mortal span than others can imagine — or would want. Take Annette Beaumanoir, who was an active woman in her nineties as this eponymous book took shape.
Hope That Can Heal: Kari Gunter-Seymour’s alone in the house of my heart, by Hephzibah Roskelly
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. “So much here depends”begins a line in a poem from Kari Gunter-Seymour’s new collection, alone in the house of my heart (Ohio University Press, 2022). Like the famous poem to which the phrase alludes, Gunter-Seymour’s poem suggests how much chance determines the path of a life.
Confluently Conversant: Sudeep Sen’s Converse, by Somudranil Sarkar
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.—Octavio Paz This quote aptly fits an anthology I came across that goes by the title Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians (Pippa Rann Books & Media, 2022).
Frighteningly Normal: Investigating Evil in Nicola Lagioia’s La città dei vivi, by Irene Bulla
Through the lens of a notorious murder case, Italian writer Nicola Lagioia paints a grim portrait of the city of Rome and its “desperate” youth and explores the reasons why ordinary people do monstrous things. La città dei vivi (2020; City of the living), to be published in English translation by Europa Editions in 2023, is the latest book by Nicola Lagioia, an Italian writer whose previous novel, La ferocia (2014; Eng.
For the Record: Conversations with Ukrainian Writers
Askold Melnyczuk is the founding editor of AGNI and contributes a series of essays called “Shadowboxing.” He is professor of creative writing at UMass Boston. Excerpts from his anti-memoir in progress have appeared recently in The Threepenny Review and Epiphany. The Epiphany excerpt, “Turbulence, Love,” was cited as Notable in The Best American Essays 2010.
Poetry Review: Writer Alain Mabanckou - Taking Life Both to Heart and in Stride
You are here: Home / Review / Poetry Review: Writer Alain Mabanckou — Taking Life Both to Heart and in Stride By Kai Maristed Take a dive into any of Alain Mabanckou’s works in English — and definitely score a copy of the new translation, As Long As The Trees Take Root In the Earth, beautifully crafted and bound. Vive la Poesie! Notes on the oeuvre of Alain Mabanckou, and in particular on As Long As Trees Take Root in The Earth and Other Poems, translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson.
Book Review: "The Communicating Vessels"
You are here: Home / Books / Book Review: “The Communicating Vessels” — Incommunicado By Kai Maristed The late Friederike Mayröcker’s über-recognizable style has become a brand, logoed by certain objects: violets, lilacs, birds The Communicating Vessels by Friederike Mayröcker. Translated from the German by Alexander Booth. A Public Space Books, 264 pages, $16.95. Friederike Mayröcker, a grandissima dame of German poetry and letters, died this past spring in her beloved Vienna at the age of 95.
Book Review: "Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home"
You are here: Home / Books / Book Review: “Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home” By Kai Maristed Endpapers is an invaluable gift to literature, mainly but not only for the quotations, details, and beguilingly written scenes of publisher Kurt Wolff’s life scattered throughout Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape and Home by Alexander Wolff. Grove Atlantic, 360 pp., $26.
"Tyll" - The Thirty Years War, From a Prankster's Point of View - The Arts Fuse
You are here: Home / Books / Book Review: “Tyll” — The Thirty Years War, From a Prankster’s Point of View By Kai Maristed Daniel Kehlmann’s narrative gift is so prodigious as to be almost aggravating. Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from the German by Ross Benjamin. Pantheon Books, 352 pages, $26.95. Ulenspiegel … was a good story teller, better than the abbot and better than the fat count too, and his stories distracted the fat count from the throbbing pain in his hand.
Winter 2019-20
The Winter 2019-20 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and remains prescient in the digital age by providing readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats.
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