By the Rivers of Babylon – António Lobo Antunes
A leisurely drift through the circadian rhythms of night and day, while past and present elements mingle in a hospital room, as a projection of the protagonist’s consciousness.
Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir – Iliana Regan
There are richer, more precise, even languorous ways to go about describing one’s fascination with the earth.
The House Inside the House of Gregor Schneider – Gary J. Shipley
That something lets itself be replicated, ad infinitum . . . brings forth the idea that the truth may be singular but its expressions are many.
Rereading Silence: From the Diaries of Those Years – Yevsey Tseytlin
Rereading Silence is a diary and a confession, a portrait of an incredibly cruel epoch and of the narrator’s soul.
All-Night Pharmacy – Ruth Madievsky
Despite the sedating effects of the opioids the narrator consumes, Madievsky’s prose is clear and insightful, rivaling William S. Burroughs’s dizzying classic, Naked Lunch.
There is something about the wreckage that won’t settle on a beginning, or a single subject, the way a collision might also make one part of the rubble indistinct from another.
Return to Latvia – Marina Jarre
What it might have cost Jarre emotionally to face this awful truth, one can only imagine. But we readers are the grateful, if tearful, recipients of this revelatory largesse.
Second Star: And Other Reasons for Lingering – Philippe Delerm
Delerm calls on the body, mind, and visual field to preserve the essence of a moment. . . . [His] direct, humorous observations are both relatable and attentive to the largely unnoticed aspects of daily life.
Litt reveals himself to be more than just a writer, just as his diary is more than just a diary. In the end, we get everything, as promised: a life in a year and a year in a life—an everything diary.
Decolonize Museums – Shimrit Lee
While public funding continues to be slashed and institutions turn to private and corporate funders for capital, Lee reminds us that the need to “decolonize” has ethical implications that extend far into the future.