So Iris' Dutch Lit month was in June, right? Many of you likely participated during June. Which, of course, was the point: a shared celebration of Dutch Lit. I was planning to do that too. And I did have my copy of Hella S. Haasse's The Tea Lords well ahead
Acts of violence and devotion, rape and worship, funerals and betrothals, love-scenes and convent-life, adultery and illness: this medieval saga has so many facets to it that I was not expecting. Not the least of which being that it gripped my attention more tightly than any of the contemporary novels
It's Rebecca's fault that I read this. And does the fact that she enjoyed it so much suggest that she has never actually read any of those works she has discussed on Of Books and Bicycles? You'll have to ask her about that. Raincoast Books, 2007Trans. Jeffrey Mehlman
Nathacha Appanah's The Last Brother Translator Geoffrey Strachan (French) Graywolf Press, 2011 A Graywolf Press publication, a contender for The Tournament of Books, with a gorgeous and haunting cover image: all excellent reasons for picking up a copy of The Last Brother without reading a single word. And then you meet
What makes for a love letter during the Cultural Revolution in China would have Heathcliff and Catherine shaking their heads. Maybe two or three pages of discussing China's excellent international and domestic circumstances, then the fortunate conditions of provincial and city life, and those of friends and class-mates. These formalities
