1. Alistair Horne on Syria →

    Alistair Horne, author of A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, wrote an article about the Syrian conflict and what Western countries should do about it.

  2. An Ermine in Czernopol

    You may have noticed that we’ve been talking a lot recently about Gregor von Rezzori’s An Ermine in Czernopol. It’s because it’s a bit of a staff favorite, and it has been getting a lot of reviews and attention, and next week Wallace Shawn and Deborah Eisenberg will be reading from it next week.

    Reviews:

    The Nation
    The Rumpus
    waggish
    The Spectator
    Bookforum (sorry, article is behind a paywall)
    The Quarterley Conversation
    The Three Percent

    Event:

    It’s next Wednesday (2/22) at 7pm at The Center for Fiction. Again, Deborah Eisenberg and Wallace Shawn will be reading.

    Staff Favorite:

    Just personal taste. Plus our edition translated by Philip Boehm is a new and vastly improved.

  3. An Ermine in Czernopol by Gregor von Rezzori

    Gregor von Rezzori’s An Ermine in Czernopol got a great review in the British magazine The Spectator’s “Book Club”. It’s a bit of a staff favorite here as well :

    The novel is a sensuous celebration of the variety and detail of life, and of the distinctive perceptions of childhood, which readers will be inclined to compare with Proust. It is a profound reflection on a period that generated the anti-Semitic pogroms which culminated in the Nazis, though it does not in any way feel dated.