"I read the way one might stroll. … I feel myself to be a sacred trespasser…"
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Take a deep breath. Now read.
Translator Phoebe Weston-Evans discusses a breathless, surreal sentence from Yves Ravey's Alerte.
"There’s something about the unbridled energy of its form that blurs the notions of past and present and arranges them, briefly, uncomfortably, on the same plane." —Phoebe Weston-Evans
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.
"... 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.
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