RIVER EAST, RIVER WEST Aube Rey Lescure Duckworth Books, publishing 25th January 2024 pp 339 The best books are the ones whose characters you think about even when you’re not reading; the ones you miss when you reach the end. Aube Rey Lescure’s River East, River West is one such book. The novel takes its name from the two halves of the city of Shanghai – Pudong (east of the Huangpu River)...
THE VANGUARDS OF HOLOGRAPHY Annie Christain Headmistress Press, 2021 99 pp. When speaking of “The Vanguards of Holography,” one is first tempted to speak of pop culture, as the volume’s tutelary spirits tend toward epigraph figures such as Kanye West, Billy Corgan, and Patton Oswalt. But a more proper place to begin is with the French avant-garde poet Francis Ponge, beloved interpretive...
“They Called You Dambudzo” is a memoir by Flora Veit-Wild, Emerita Professor of African Literatures and Cultures at Humboldt University, Berlin. She was born in West Germany in 1947. “Dambudzo” was Dambudzo Marechera, a novelist and poet, an enfant terrible of modern literature, born in Southern Rhodesia in 1952. With their two young boys, Flora and her husband Victor...
Long Rain by Lenard Moore. Berkley, California. Wet Cement Press, 2021. 140 pp. $16.00. Review by Miho Kinnas 霖The kanji character for the title Long Rain, is pronounced na・ga・a・mé in Japanese. The Japanese poetry has been associating the word with the sound of another verb, na・ga・mé・(ru) —眺める that means to glance, look, view, stare, watch, or focus for some time. Playing with...
Ai Wei (Author), Alice Xin Liu (Translator, Chinese to English ) , The Road Home, Penguin Random House/Penguin Books, 2019, 81 pages Violence, by definition, is the intentional use of force against oneself or others to inflict injury, death or trauma. Despite being widely reprimanded and censured, more often than not, the use of violence is justified, or even celebrated once it is labeled as...