Jul 16 2018
At the opening of The Maid of Orleans, as Schiller’s five-act verse tragedy is known in English, France is divided among three parties: English troops who have taken Paris and the north in pressing their king’s dynastic claim to the French throne, southern lands held by the Valois king Charles VII, and Burgundy in the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/07/16/die-jungfrau-von-orleans-by-friedrich-schiller/
Jun 11 2018
(I’m quite proud of myself for cramming this book into my schedule before I had to return it to the library, so props to meee!) Circe is a fantastic meditation on the stages of womanhood and on what it means to be human, bringing a minor character from Greek mythology to the forefront with her …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/11/circe-by-madeline-miller/
Jun 02 2018
Silent House, Orhan Pamuk’s second novel, tells some of the stories of three generations of an extended family. Pamuk rotates among five narrators, each of whom tells their part in the first person. Published in 1983, the book’s main action is set in 1980, just before another military coup shook Turkey. The house in question …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/02/silent-house-by-orhan-pamuk/
Mar 31 2018
This powerful book about a woman discovering her own agency through the lens of the Bangladeshi immigrant experience surprised me at how timeless it felt even though it’s set at the turn of the 21st century. It’s very much in the tradition of classics by Thomas Hardy and Willa Cather, documenting with a fine eye …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/03/31/brick-lane-by-monica-ali/
Feb 26 2018
If I had read The Naive and Sentimental Novelist before reading Orhan Pamuk’s novels, I probably would not have bothered with them. That would have been a pity because most of them are very good, and one, Snow, is among the best I have ever read. So there’s a considerable gap between this collection of …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/02/26/the-naive-and-sentimental-novelist-by-orhan-pamuk/
Dec 23 2017
I really liked this book, with one huge exception, which I’ll get to in a minute. It’s a very accurate depiction of life among the jetset in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, which I grew up lifestyle-adjacent to as an upper middle-class kid in Malaysia. Much has been written about how South and Southeast Asia …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/23/crazy-rich-asians-crazy-rich-asians-1-by-kevin-kwan/
Aug 07 2017
Today I learned that there’s a difference between the Man Booker and the Man Booker International Prizes, doh. As with other Man Booker winners, this was eminently readable. But as also with far too many other Man Booker winners, this wasn’t as great as I’d expected. Maybe it’s just because I’ve spent so much time …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/08/07/a-horse-walks-into-a-bar-by-david-grossman-translated-by-jessica-cohen/
May 24 2017
The important information on this book’s cover is the subtitle, Conversations with Robert Silverberg. Traveler of Worlds is entirely a set of interviews with Silverberg, who recently passed 80 years of age. He’s one of the grand old men of science fiction; he has attended every Hugo award ceremony; he was incredibly prolific back in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/24/traveler-of-worlds-by-alvaro-zinos-amaro/
Apr 23 2017
Where to even begin with The Foundation Pit? The author, Andrey Platonov was born in Russia in 1899, the son of a railway worker, and later worked as a land reclamation expert. He was a fervent supporter of the Russian Revolution; during the 1920s he supervised the digging of wells, construction of ponds, and draining …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/23/the-foundation-pit-by-andrey-platonov/
Feb 25 2017
“Schiller’s Wallenstein is so great that there is nothing else like it.” — Goethe How’s that for a blurb? Goethe didn’t just offer praise, he directed the premiere of all three parts of Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy. The third, Wallenstein’s Death (published as Wallenstein II, as the two previous plays comprise the first volume), comes from …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/02/25/wallenstein-ii-by-friedrich-schiller/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire