Translated from the Russian by Max Lawton. The novel’s “blue lard” is a substance developed at a top-secret facility in the remote Soviet Union. The facility holds numerous clones of Russian writers, ...

In the magnifying glass of the poetic word, Modernism is the history of the twentieth century; it was, you may remember a turbulent history—utopian hopes, political polarisation, prejudice, wars, and ...

Arab slavers prey upon the tribes. Leopold’s ghost will never sleep, Pinched and prodded everywhere by amputated hands. Allah and Jehovah have both behaved like vultures over Africa, Imagining a ...

Not at all. Purple covered the couch he chose to lay her down on. Pillows supported her head, and he was glad to share that bed. Bring about a union of her contours and his inclination. Then came the ...

A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. Chapter Twenty-Nine. The Blues in Paris CHARLIE TOOK his thesis with him. He would give it to Jennifer with all the corrections when they returned. He was still ...

From the word go, Sudhir Kakar’s book on psychoanalysis and non-Western civilizations promises to be entertaining as well as enlightening. Initially he points out that most of our knowledge on how ...

With a cruel flavour. All the other wives and concubines resorted to The most abject flattery, desperate to win her favour. Her Sultan tyrant also had a penchant for a Moorish page: Souluk, a sweet, ...

The gods still lurk in the background of modern tragedy. Characters cock one ear to see if they can make out the congratulation or tears from afar. But they hear nothing, or perhaps they hear the ...

Dsi Tschun: in his youth a spendthrift who squandered his inheritance. Fond of wine and idling, he drank and continued to drink, And when he had run through all his cash, his family disowned him. A ...

I had been reading Philippe Jaccottet in French and English for many years, so was particularly moved to come across his last published poems (La Clarté Notre-Dame) in the version translated by John ...

WE WERE ALONE in the gardens of the hotel, awaiting fruit cocktails that were not arriving. After the many years that I have come to this country, I should know that time is not the same here as ...

TWO CARS ARE moving towards each other on a winter night. It is a country road and there is no roadside illumination. Only the carlights. These beams swerve and shudder and prod the tarmac, the grass, ...