“They only think about living in peace; they have everything they need to be happy: work and youth.” Reading a book by Irène Némirovsky means taking care of yourself, loving yourself. For every topic she addresses, she is capable of capturing hidden nuances, shamefully suppressed perspectives, and the most appropriate words. Whether we find ourselves in a wealthy, bourgeois family in the city or at a provincial landowner’s court, Némirovsky is capable of penetrating to...
“Lying on her side with her dead daughter on her chest, she felt her daughter slowly cooling. Then she had no more tears.” It’s a white book, with a sincere and far from banal title; skimming the table of contents, you’ll find yourself thinking: snow, fog, and so on. You’re probably thinking of a simple book, imbued with the purity to which Korean literature, and specifically Han Kang’s, has become somewhat accustomed. We’re faced with...
“The comic is more cruel: it brutally reveals to us the insignificance of everything.” Born from the union of two short texts published in the 1980s in Le Débat, the book offers an even more intimate insight into Kundera. In both the first essay (Prague, Disappearing Poetry) and the second (Eighty-Nine Words), one gets the impression of a champion of beauty, memory, truth, and a firm resolve to avoid compromise. With the Force of Reason,...
“She is so surprised to see her mother leaning over her that she forgets to cry.” We are certainly witnessing a narrative experiment. A successful idea, but one that we weren’t ready for at the beginning of the novel, and in fact, we read the first five pages twice. Written almost entirely in the second person singular, the book immediately conveys a sense of alienation, as if the narrator wanted to simultaneously care for the...
“Violating the conventions and beliefs of his world proved neither an ethically sound nor a politically astute choice.” Understanding the constantly and rapidly changing world of international relations means relying on the knowledge and quality of scholars and intellectuals who can help develop lateral thinking about the implications of a given event and connect them. Since the early 2020s (although some specify since the early 2010s), the liberal international order seems to have reached its...
“As soon as I saw Alisia get off the train I thought with relief that we had reached the point: she was finally leaving me.“ Silvio and Alisia are a non-couple. They have almost nothing in common, yet their relationship continues like a stone thrown into a lake, which continues to sink until it reaches the bottom. As a couple, however, they work because, as the author writes, the most successful couples are those who...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “Expecting mirages to take us where we want to go is madness.” Morgana is the deceptive fairy who distorts reality through strange visions, making hallucinations something we must necessarily confront. The treatise on imaginary ethnography that Celati presents us does more or less the same thing: it forces us to immerse ourselves in the lives of a nonexistent people, describing their habits, stories, and characteristics, mocking a certain colonial descriptivism and leaving...
“I fought against white domination and against black domination.” After finishing the book, we felt sad but full of hope. Guilty despite being innocent. Filled with remorse for faults not ours. A necessary text, to understand the world of yesterday and, unfortunately, that of tomorrow. We had read it years ago, and reread it today, and we have come closer to its contents. A small book of just a few pages, but of unimaginable scope....
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “I’ve always been an architect of problems.” The first thing to say is that Ilaria Camilletti was born in 2005. The second thing to say is that this book isn’t beautiful despite, or even though, the author is twenty years old. It’s simply beautiful. It’s important to say that. Obviously, “beautiful” is an adjective that requires qualification, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, but for now. Ilaria has just finished her high school diploma,...
“Orsola treats me like an adult. As an equal. Obedience doesn’t mean subordination.“ The flavor of the words and the human touch Fleur Jaeggy narrates in this book are unparalleled. They bring back memories forgotten in a short time. Empathizing with the protagonists of the story comes naturally, even though the reader is unlikely to have experienced the events recounted. The immortality of the text lies in the precise reflection of certain interpersonal dynamics, typical...
