“Absurdistan is not just a hilarious novel, but a record of a particular peak in the history of human folly. No one is more capable of dealing with the transition from the hell of socialism to the hell of capitalism in Eastern Europe than Shteyngart, the East German writer Wolf's ( Cassandra ) latest novel, a slender, claustrophobic monologue, distinguishes itself from much contemporary fiction in focussing on the essential: the destructive demiurge lurking under the human skullcap, a destructiveness appa Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest. But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, Have you ever watched a horse flick her tail or had a dog greet you at your door and known in your heart that the animal was exhibiting something more than simple instinctual responses? If so, you must read this book. In it Vicki Hearne asserts that anima An intense and lively debate on literature and art between thinkers who became some of the great figures of twentieth-century philosophy and literature.No other country and no other period has produced a tradition of major aesthetic debate to compare with |