Harry Mulisch: The Discovery of Heaven
Harry Mulisch passed away the other week and with tributes all over the Dutch media I thought I'd finally read The Discovery of Heaven.
Tristes Tropicomix
The Financial Times Weekend Magazine invited the creators of Logicomix, to do a short tribute to Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Logicomix. An Epic Search For Truth
Logicomix, a graphic novel about mathematics and logic, is a pure delight.
The Impossible Dazzlingly Achieved
Viktoria Mullova's new recording of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin is breathtaking.
Literature, Rationality and Rational Choice Theory
Are fictional characters on average more rational than one would expect based on empirical findings of how people actually behave or not?
Roberto Bolaño: The Savage Detectives
The Savage Detectives is quite simply a magnificent novel. This is why I read literature.
Borges and Perec on Classifying Animals
In his short story The Analytical Language of John Wilkins Borges famously lists a hilarious classification of animals found in an apocryphal Chinese encyclopedia. In Penser/Classer Georges Perec lists an equally hilarious classification drawn from various official documents.
Joseph O'Neill: Netherland
It has won the PEN/Faulkner Award and it has been almost unanimously praised, but perhaps that is precisely the problem. The novel nestles itself comfortably in the nicely made corner lounge of current taste.
Richard Flanagan: The Unknown Terrorist
The Unknown Terrorist feels very contemporary and has a great sense of urgency.
Olivier Rolin: L'Invention du Monde
L’invention du monde (The Invention of the World) is a novel like no other. To say that it is ambitious is an understatement. But it succeeds in every respect.
J.M. Coetzee: Elizabeth Costello
Elizabeth Costello is not just a brilliant, moving novel, full of ideas. It is also an important novel. It questions the power of writing and answers it, in writing.
Michel Houellebecq: The Elementary Particles
A friend recently told me she had read about a dozen books during an illness and wondered how many books she could have read if she hadn’t partied so much all her life. I have read many books and I often wonder how much I could have lived if I hadn’t read so much.