“The Artistic Lie”

“In the short-story collection Elegy for a Fabulous World, her first book written in English, Romanian-born writer Alta Ifland conveys what it was like to grow up in Eastern Europe under Communism. Acknowledging the limitations of memory and claiming a reverence for truth, while expressing a contempt for facts (the raw ingredients of propaganda, infinitely susceptible to spin), Ifland lays down her reality manifesto in one of the volume’s first stories: ‘As soon as I became conscious of existing, I was aware of a strong impulse in me for mystification, for the artistic lie.'”

Karen Laws reviews Alta Ifland’s Elegy for a Fabulous World.

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Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeney’s and most recently the founding editor of BuzzFeed Books, Isaac is now the co-host of BuzzFeed News’ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM. He also appears frequently on The Today Show to talk books, and is co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes) (winner of an IACP award), and the author of a YA novel and picture book forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He uses Twitter.

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