Blog

Ryunosuke Akutagawa: Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

Ryunosuke Akutagawa, one of Japan’s most celebrated writers, cut his life short at age 35, by suicide (1892-1927). During his short career of 12-15 years Akutagawa (pronounced Dyu-noss-ke Ak-ta-ga-wa) produced stories that continue to be read seriously both in Japan and in the West. For us, his...

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Reading Across the Lines

It is 1925 in Ilheus, a sleepy town in the province of Bahia in southern Brazil, and Nacib the Arab’s longstanding cook—for him personally as well as for his café—has up and left him for family matters, as she has threatened to do for years. On this same day that Nacib loses his cook, Colonel...

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The Life and Slow Death of a Former Pennsylvania Steel Town

The Washington Post writer Nicole Crowder published an article recently describing the process that award-winning documentary photographer Pete Marovich used to come up with a poignant, perhaps unsettling look at how the Pennsylvania steel town of Aliquippa...

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