Doug Merrill

Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Currently based in Berlin, following stints in Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Atlanta. Also blogs at A Fistful of Euros, though less frequently than here these days.

Most commented posts

  1. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — 9 comments
  2. White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies — 6 comments
  3. Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
  4. Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 6 comments
  5. The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments

Author's posts

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

What would Jazz Age America be like if it had a large and powerful Native American state in the Midwest, with its capital a thriving city called Cahokia, descendant of the largest Indigenous settlement north of Mexico? In 1922, the great Mound is still the symbolic center of the city, as it has been for …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/03/03/cahokia-jazz-by-francis-spufford/

Marzahn Mon Amour

Marzahn Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp

With Marzahn Mon Amour Katja Oskamp aims for a double re-evaluation: of her own writing, seemingly derailed after two novels and a story collection are followed by publishers’ rejections of the novellas that followed, and of the district of Marzahn in the northeastern corner of Berlin, far from the city’s hip party places or its …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/03/02/marzahn-mon-amour/

Eine blaßblaue Frauenschrift by Franz Werfel

Eine blaßblaue Frauenschrift by Franz Werfel

At the beginning of Eine blaßblaue Frauenschrift (In a Woman’s Pale Blue Hand), life is going very well for Leonidas Tachezy as he celebrates his fiftieth birthday. Thanks to a lucky break in his student days, his natural abilities and discipline have led him to a high station in Austrian society in 1936. He is …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/02/25/eine-blasblaue-frauenschrift-by-franz-werfel/

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky

As settings for a post-apocalypse story go, the Moscow Metro is pretty cool. It’s vast, it’s full of secrets, parts of it were actually designed to survive a nuclear war, it lends itself to an episodic tale with lots of changes of scenery. I’m not sure that a whole lot more thought went into it …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/02/24/metro-2033-by-dmitry-glukhovsky/

The Road by Vasily Grossman

The Road by Vasily Grossman

Vasily Grossman is one of the great writers of the twentieth century, and The Road is a very good place to start reading his work. Born in the Ukrainian city of Berdychiv when it was part of the Russian Empire, Grossman experienced the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing civil war as a teen. He began …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/02/11/the-road-by-vasily-grossman/

The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard

The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard

Before Lucius Shepard had published stories, he had the idea of a dragon who was 6,000 feet long, immobilized but not killed by a wizard’s spell ages ago, now more or less a part of the landscape with towns and villages on and around his body, which was difficult to distinguish from the other hills …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/02/10/the-dragon-griaule-by-lucius-shepard/

The Chemical Wedding by John Crowley

The Chemical Wedding in a new version by John Crowley

Or, more properly and to give the book its full era-appropriate title, The Chemical Wedding by Christian Rosencreutz, A Romance in Eight Days, by Johann Valentin Andreae in a new version by John Crowley Cheekily claimed as a special 400th anniversary edition, The Chemical Wedding is a new version of one of the founding Rosicrucian …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/19/the-chemical-wedding-by-john-crowley/

Taking Stock of 2023

The more my eyes went up and down the list of books I read in 2023, the more they came to rest on We Never Talk About My Brother by Peter S. Beagle. The call from Stockholm doesn’t come for people who publish books with titles like Lila the Werewolf or The Innkeeper’s Song, but …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/03/taking-stock-of-2023/

The Iliad translated by Emily Wilson

The Iliad by Emily Wilson

Introducing her translation of The Iliad, Emily Wilson gets right to the heart of the matter. “The beautiful word minunthadios, ‘short-lived,’ is used of both Achilles and Hector, and applies to all of us. We die too soon, and there is no adequate recompense for the terrible, inevitable loss of life. Yet through poetry, the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/12/31/the-iliad-translated-by-emily-wilson/

The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power

The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power

Samantha Power was a writer before she went into public service. And even though she’s been America’s ambassador to the United Nations, and is now serving as the chief of the US Agency for International Development, it’s possible — maybe even probable — that she’s a better writer than anything else. Which means that even after …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/12/30/the-education-of-an-idealist-by-samantha-power/