Reading Around the World

Reading Around the World: Brazil, still terra incognita?

Reading Around the World: Brazil, still terra incognita?

When the Viennese author Stefan Zweig first travelled to Brazil in 1936, he deemed the South American country “terra incognita in the cultural sense.” 

Now that we've lived with Brazil through the Olympics coverage and caught glimpses of the place and its people, we look to a variety of novels to pull us further into this diverse land.

Reading Around the World: Cuba

Reading Around the World: Cuba

This week, with our attention turned to Cuba, we decided to reread a few of our favorite books by Cuban writers and works set there.

Join us in considering the literature of Cuba, including works by Chantel Acededo, G. Cabrera Infante and Rachel Kushner, and the photographs of Peter Turnley. 

Reading Around the World: Syria

Reading Around the World: Syria

Sometimes you have an obligation to say it while it’s hot. You encounter a new writer and feel the charge of her work in ways that make you want to drop the façade of the third-person. And so let it begin, here, with a shout from the rooftops:

I have a new hero, and her name is Samar Yazbek.

Literature, or The Place Where History Becomes Immortal

Literature, or The Place Where History Becomes Immortal

Literature reminds us that we should never be afraid to look at something as though we’re witnessing it for the first time, however well we think we know it. This is one reason great books offer endless company and sanctuary. Each expedition into them reveals new vistas: the book becomes more intelligent as we grow alongside it. 

Reading Around the World: Catalan

Reading Around the World: Catalan

"... life has so much more imagination than human beings, is never, even in the face of the most conclusive proof, predictable or definitive."
Flavia Company, The Island of Last Truth

In our latest Reading Around the World, we explore the Argentinian-born Catalan writer Flavia Company and her masterful slim novel The Island of Last Truth

Reading Around the World: Somalia

Reading Around the World: Somalia

We continue through Africa in our Reading Around the World series. This time, join us in Somalia with Nuruddin Farah and his masterful Hiding in Plain Sight

"If the paranoid regime of Siad Barre won't allow me to return because of my writing, then my work must be worth continuing. I must write something worthy of the challenge."  Nuruddin Farah