Writer, editor, translator, project manager, reformed bookseller. Currently based in Berlin, following stints in Moscow, Tbilisi, Munich, Washington, Warsaw, Budapest and Atlanta. Previously blogged at A Fistful of Euros, though that is now largely lost to link rot.
Most commented posts
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison — 9 comments
- White Eagle, Red Star by Norman Davies — 7 comments
- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch — 7 comments
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire — 6 comments
- The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin — 6 comments
Author's posts
Once I got into it — this winter, after failing last winter — this went by fast, and why not, it’s a collection of short autobiographical, ostensibly seasonal snippets from a Norwegian author who’s often mentioned as a potential Nobel laureate. As an object, the edition of Winter that I have is a lovely book: thick …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/12/03/winter-by-karl-ove-knausgaard/
Not quite 30 years ago I was backpacking around southeastern Europe when something unfortunate happened: I ran out of books. Well, technically, I did not run out of books; my backpack still held what a reasonable person would probably consider more than enough books. But since I had last replenished from the freebies at a …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/11/30/the-brothers-karamazov-by-fyodor-dostoevsky/
A country and a century, told through what happened to a family, narrated by a member of that family’s next-to-youngest generation, dedicated to a member of the youngest generation who is trying to both escape and understand the legacy she is bearing. In The Eighth Life (For Brilka), Nino Haratischvili brings her native Georgia to …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/11/20/the-eighth-life-by-nino-haratischvili/
The Grief of Stones begins with the execution of a murderer uncovered by Thara Celehar in The Witness for the Dead. His friend Anora is trying to talk him out of attending, saying Celehar is punishing himself, and Celehar replies that he believes he has a responsibility. The friend loses the argument, though both of …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/11/03/the-grief-of-stones-by-katherine-addison/
In the first hundred pages of the book of her translation of The Odyssey, Emily Wilson introduces readers to this three thousand year old epic poem that is one of the foundations of Western literature. She opens doorways to the poem for readers not already well versed in Homer, but she also makes clear that …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/29/premature-evaluation-the-odyssey-translated-by-emily-wilson/
Czeslaw Milosz has a captivating mind. In Native Realm he invites readers to join him on what his subtitle calls “A Search for Self-Definition,” and is a journey from the wooded interior of what is today Lithuania, where he was born into a family of Polish-speaking gentry, through his young adulthood in interwar Warsaw, past …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/26/native-realm-by-czeslaw-milosz/
Seldom does a book’s title fit so perfectly, so terribly as Inhuman Land by Jozef Czapski (pron. “Chop-ski”). He was born into an aristocratic Polish family in Prague, at a time when that city was ruled from Vienna as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Czapski grew up near Minsk, in present-day Belarus; he finished his …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/23/inhuman-land-by-jozef-czapski/
“How would the history of international relations in ‘the East’ be written,” asks Ayşe Zarakol, “if we did not always read the ending — the rise of the West and the decline of the East — into the past?” (frontispiece) Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders is her effort to …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/22/before-the-west-by-ayse-zarakol/
So in my day job I do things related to fairly customized computer software, and if the company needed some extras to stand around in the background for a public presentation or a video about a new product, sure, I’d do that. Anna Tromedlov, the first-person narrator of Hench, says yes to more or less …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/16/hench-by-natalie-zina-walschots/
If not for Donald Fucking Trump, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch would have had a long, distinguished and inspiring career serving the United States of America that nevertheless remained practically unknown outside the circles of her work. Perhaps she would have been best known for providing a crucial piece of local knowledge when the embassy in Mogadishu …
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/15/lessons-from-the-edge-by-marie-yovanovitch/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire