The opening lines of Hédi Kaddour’s poem “New Wine” create the colorful, tangible atmosphere characteristic of his work. Employing surprising descriptions of his everyday world, the narrator of each poem in Kaddour’s collection Treason, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker, pulls the reader into an environment which is both entirely new and familiar.
Although this month’s Global and International Studies theme suggests a look at places far afield from home, in the US, where people come every day in search of a new life, international studies can be found even in the interactions of neighbors or a walk through a town or city. Claudia Gryvatz Copquin’s The Neighborhoods of Queens is an in-depth look at Queens, covering every neighborhood throughout the borough.
You probably have ten different places to be today, or at least it feels like it. Although that may be a little overwhelming, it’s a familiar feeling. A neatly cluttered schedule—that’s modern life, and perhaps you’re even proud of it. To the title character of Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov, however, you
Adina Hoffman’s biography of Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Al, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, is not a love story. Instead, it is a story of loss and how from that loss Taha has created art. Amira became a “muse” in Taha’s work, a symbol of everything his family lost when they became refugees; indeed, it was everything.
An interview with Janet Malcolm is a rare thing. Malcolm’s latest book, Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial, recounts the sensational murder trial of Mazoltuv Borukhova, a young physician in Queens convicted in 2009 for arranging the public assassination of her husband in front of their four year-old daughter. We sat down with the author for special insight into her experiences observing the court drama and writing this fascinating account.
June 2011 has turned into a landmark month for Yale University Press’s beloved cartoonist-author Ivan Brunetti. Earlier this summer, his wonderful Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice landed at #17 on the American Booksellers Association’s “Indie Comics & Graphic Works bestseller list” based on sales in independent bookstores nationwide for the eight-week
Summer vacationers all over America right now are camping for a weekend, spending the afternoon at the pool, or if they are adventurous, going snorkeling. Most people probably are not embarking on a dangerous transatlantic voyage and leaving their children for a six-month tour of a foreign country, but that’s
Sterling Memorial Library looks like a Gothic cathedral. It has the vaulted ceiling, the stained-glass windows, and the secret garden. Yet this library, Richard Selzer says, “is chock full of loonies, of whom I am one.” A former surgeon and professor of surgery at Yale School of Medicine, Selzer has
The Goodreads giveaway for My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume One, 1915-1933 may have passed, but the story of the letters is only now beginning to unfold as we approach the June 21 publication of the volume. In just over 30 years, Stieglitz and
After being shortlisted for the Griffith Poetry Prize earlier this year, Syrian poet Adonis won the prestigious Goethe Prize of Frankfurt-am-Maim in Germany for his lifetime body of work, with selected highlights appearing in our Margellos World Republic of Letters title: Adonis: Selected Poems, the first collection in English to