A Correspondence: On the Humanity of Literature
If literature functions as a mirror of the world, why was it that some of us weren’t being reflected at all?
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Posts Tagged: Istanbul
This Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Although Brooklyn stalwart BookCourt is sadly set to close at the end of the year, Modern Lovers author and former BookCourt employee Emma Straub plans to open a new shop in the the neighborhood. Books Are Magic, as the shop will be called, will be 1,500 square feet and hopes to open by April. Straub wouldn’t be […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Istanbul is suffering from a shortage of bookstores. Barnes & Noble has ousted CEO Ronald Boire. A crane collapsed in front of a Reno bookstore. No people—or books—were injured.
...moreOn the Road
In his monthly series “The Lives of Others” over at the Paris Review, Edward White introduces us to globe-trotting Turkish writer, Evliya Çelebi, and the esoteric but lively book of travel stories he penned almost four centuries ago: Evliya so adored the bustling energy of Istanbul that he dedicated the first volume of the Seyahatname to […]
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The Read Along: Jessa Crispin
Jessa Crispin on reading abroad, watching ships chug through the Bosporus, and watching Outlander.
...moreTurkish Delight
TI say we are not together. I say that we are not together, but I see him everywhere. He spent a summer here, summers and summers ago, and I booked my ticket to get closer to him and I booked my ticket to get away from him. He said they love Iranians in Turkey. They’ll […]
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
A bookstore in mafia-controlled Sicily refuses to stock a book by the son of a jailed mafia “boss of bosses,” Totò Riina. P.S.Bookshop, a used bookstore in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood, is finally closing after a year-long struggle with higher rent. Arabic bookstores in Istanbul provide support networks for Syrian refugees.
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The Rumpus Interview with Meline Toumani
Meline Toumani discusses her debut, There Was and There Was Not, the rewards and risks of writing a political memoir, and what it means to approach a divided past and future.
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
One Grand is a new bookstore in the western New York state town of Narrowsburg where the only books are recommended reads. The inventory will cycle through recommendations from selected curators with salon-style readings held on a barge near the store. Istanbul’s Mephisto Bookstore is located on the İstiklal, a busy commercial district with late […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Bookstores in Mumbai, India are losing customers from institutional sales as large buyers turn directly to suppliers, and though 700 existing retailers exist in the city, the last few years have no seen new stores open. A Syrian couple has opened an Arabic-language bookstore in Istanbul hoping to change cultural perceptions. The Occidental Weekly offers […]
...moreCity and Sustenance
At Hazlitt, novelist Orhan Pamuk discusses the influence of food and food vendors on his latest work, the ritual of drinking boza, and the inspiration that the city of Istanbul provides: I walk in the city all the time. It’s not because of research; it’s a lifestyle. I like it. I belong to that city […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Tokyo’s Morioka Shoten stocks just one book. Shop owner Yoshiyuki Morioka selects a single book each week to sell in his austere boutique. A new non-profit bookstore in Istanbul, Turkey seeks to focus on Arab culture and the refugee experience as a response to the increasing number of Syrian intellectuals migrating to the city. An unassuming […]
...moreLearning How to Write
“The Apparent Author,” Meriç Algün Ringborg’s latest exhibition in Istanbul’s Gallery NON, presents a sound installation of an author talking about “her artistic goals, ambitions, and potentials,” as Rumpus contributor Kaya Genc writes in The Paris Review. Genc makes a startling observation about the author’s workplace: there is “a shelf holding more than one hundred […]
...moreTurkish Protest News
Though American media coverage has been minimal, anti-government protests in Turkey have been raging for three days now. The BBC has a summary of the protesters’ grievances against Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s increasingly autocratic and religious prime minister. The Guardian is maintaining an often-updated live feed on the situation.
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