Blogs

January 31st, 2012

Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole (Nextbook/Schocken)

On January 23, 2012, Reuters reported that 150 ancient Jewish scrolls and documents had been discovered in Afghanistan “and most likely smuggled” to private dealers in London. Dating from the 11th century, the cache’s commercial records appear to be written in a Judeo-Persian language associated with merchants who worked the Silk Road trade.

January 13th, 2012

on Coma by Pierre Guyotat, translated from the French by Noura Wedell (Semiotext[e]/MIT Press)

Although Pierre Guyotat’s Coma comes packaged between two fiery anti-memoir statements -- by Gary Indiana in his introduction and by translator Noura Wedell in an afterword – it is nevertheless a personal narrative. But conscience compels it to question and reemploy the genre’s conventions.

December 22nd, 2011

on Dante In Love by A. N. Wilson (Farrar Straus Giroux)

Summing up why Dante’s Commedia was neglected between the Renaissance and the Romantics, Robert Lowell said that changes in literary styles had eclipsed Dante’s status as a forerunner. “Something too in his character must have awed and scared men off by its arrogance,” he wrote.

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