Blog

Svetlana Alexievich: Voices from Chernobyl

As I have been reading my way through Powell’s Bookstore “25 Books to Read Before You Die, World Edition, 2016,” I have been choosing my selections from the list somewhat randomly. For some time I’ve had my eye on Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl and...

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Bohumil Hrabal: Too Loud a Solitude

Czechoslovakian writer Bohumil Hrabal comes out of a long tradition of wicked satirists. Think of Rabelais, Swift, Voltaire, and, in our era, Günter Grass (The Tin Drum), Raymond Coover (The Public Burning), and Terry Southern (The Magic Christian). Or, even more...

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