A Review of Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk. Translated from Turkish by Ekin Oklap. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022. Orhan Pamuk is the first Turkish Nobel laureate for literature. His work focuses on Turkish culture and history, using labyrinthine plots, an overload of detail, operatic flights of imagination, and tongue-in-cheek word play. . . .
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A Review of Ernst Jünger, On the Marble Cliffs. Translated by Tess Lewis, Introduction by Jessi Jezewska Stevens, Afterword by Maurice Blanchot. New York Review Books, 2023. An elegant, refined, somewhat aloof writer whose oeuvre spans eight decades, Ernst Jünger is a towering figure of modern German letters. In addition to his correspondence . . .
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If a body meet a bodyGoin’ for a brew,If a lassie raised her glassie,Would or wouldn’t you? Auld Lang Syne and whisky fineCan warm us all night through.But a beer augments the cheer,So let the pours ensue! Here’s a lovely Scottish AleTranslucent, copper-hued.And its creamy head prevailsOn tongues (and glasses, too). Biscuity and gently . . .
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“I would like to open a door”—the sentence was uttered by a prisoner on death row for decades now, in San Quentin. For decades now he has not touched the handle of a door. California has repudiated capital punishment, but when Jarvis Masters was sentenced to death the gas chambers were still . . .
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Why settle for a beer cocktail when you can enjoy a boozy beer? As the holidays come round againAnd you gather with family and friends,Boozy beers make us merryWith malt, chocolate, cherry,And spice. Here are six I commend. 1.For a booze-infused brew you’ll repeat,Try this toffee-hued ale for a treat.From oak barrels . . .
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O Germany, thank you for beerThat we relish this time of the year.A Sober October?My dears, that’s a NoperWith so many brews to revere! Oktoberfest Märzens are fine,As are Festbiers if you’re so inclined.Yet there’s more than these stylesFor us Germanophiles—And for you I have sampled these kinds. 1Foam-headed, light-bodied, and darkIs . . .
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Are you ready to go back to school?Are you ready to follow the rules?Fall semester draws near—Why not reach for a beerTo ease into your schedule? Stay cool! Whether teacher or parent or student-of-age, don’t you’d think ‘twould be prudentTo stock beer in your fridgeThat can serve as a bridgeAs your summer . . .
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Moldy Strawberries is an inspiring exercise in hopelessness and futility. Caio Fernando Abreu’s short story collection, translated from Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato, serves as a coming to terms with life under a repressive government, life without a brighter future. Abreu wrote in Brazil in the 1980s, through the country’s twenty-one-year military . . .
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Hyam Plutzik’s 32 Poems/ 32 Poemas (Suburbano Ediciones, 2022) 32 Poems/ 32 Poemas (2021) is a fully bilingual (Spanish and English) collection of selected poems by the twentieth-century American poet Hyam Plutzik (1911-1962). The three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish immigrant parents from Belarus. Plutzik, . . .
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Barque of phosphorOn the palmy beach…—Wallace Stevens, “Fabliau of Florida” The summer is now getting hotter,But your beach beer need not taste like water!Here are Florida brewsI’ve selected for youTo pursue as a beach blanket squatter. My recs make a 4-pack and flight,So I’ve fashioned my sequence just right:From lager to Tripel,These . . .
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