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Adele’s portrait depicted a triumph of Jewish assimilation and art patronage in Middle Europe, a community that inspired Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, and countless other creative geniuses. But the crimes surrounding the artwork make it a relic of assimilation’s tragic failure.
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The latest novel by Spanish writer Carloz Ruiz Zafón opens on a cold winter’s day in Barcelona. Business is abysmal at Sempre & Sons bookshop. The Sempre family’s loquacious friend, Fermín Romero de Torres, offers to parade in his underwear by the bookstore window to incite “strong literary emotions” from females passing by. Thus begins […]
...moreIn his recent blend of fiction, essays, and literary genealogy, The Loss Library and Other Unfinished Stories, South African writer Ivan Vladislavic delves into the dazzling enigmas of unwritten work. He draws from his personal notebooks over the past two decades and uses writer’s block, the writer’s ultimate pestilence, as a source for inspiration.
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