Writings on International Film Art
by Bert Cardullo (2004)
A collection of selected Cardullo’s essays previously published in quarterlies, In Search of Cinema is divided into three parts: 1) Focus on Iranian Cinema, 2) Europe, the Americas and Beyond (concentrating on recent, “less well-known” cinemas from the continents) and 3) Form, Genre, Oeuvre and Other Arts.
by Orhan Pamuk (1990)
Galip’s wife, Ruya, has suddenly disappeared; suspecting that she has left him for her ex-husband and half-brother, Celal — a popular newspaper columnist who has also vanished mysteriously, Galip embarks on a journey to find them both, obsessively searching for (and drowning in) endless possible meanings and leads.
by Orhan Pamuk (1995)
I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.
With that hokum-slash-truism, the novel begins the story about Osman, a young student who became obsessed about a book, as well as those who have read it, looking for some sorts of answers, common threads, and comparisons to how the book affects their lives and gives the possibility of a new life (a sentiment shared by many readers, I’m sure).
by Marjane Satrapi (2001)
An autobiographical comic/graphic novel/bande dessinée, Persepolis tells the story of Marjane Satrapi as a girl growing up in Iran around the revolution & wartime, then abroad by herself. Chronologically told, with each chapter focusing loosely on specific events, the memoir tells us more about everyday occurrences in the life of a daughter of a (relatively) priviliged, “liberal” Iranian family than about general Iranian life (the family lives comfortably even during troubled times, and Satrapi spent a good deal of her youth abroad in Vienna) or history. The illustrations are simple, basic figures, and Satrapi effectively and stylistically uses stark black and white with no greytones.
by Roberto Bolaño (2000)
A first-person narration novella, By Night in Chile is a deathbed confession of Father Urrutia, a.k.a. Father Ibacache, a half-hearted Jesuit priest and literary critic. Set during the transition from Allende to Pinochet, the novella — written in one single paragraph except for the last sentence — paints the turbulent political landscape with particular emphasis on the state, the church, and the literary/artistic figures.
Things: A Story of the ‘60
A Man Asleep
by Georges Perec (1965)
Containing Perec’s two-sides-of-the-same-coin novellas, both Things and A Man Asleep tell the stories of opposing youthful, spiralling indulgences in futile escape from life.
by Roberto Bolaño
Selected from Editorial Anagrama’s collections, the short stories in Last Evenings on Earth were previously published in English in The New Yorker, Grand Street, and Tin House. Written in direct, short sentences, one feels, as Bolaño said (or so according to the book jacket), “the melancholy folklore of exile” pervading these stories.
by Susan Sontag (1967)
A collection of selected Sontag’s essays, published between 1962 and 1965, Against Interpretation cover a range of subjects that today might feel rather outdated and canonical in its fare (Camus, Sartre, Genet, Weil, Sarraute, Pavese, Artaud, Lukacs, Levi-Strauss, Ionesco, Hochhut, Brecht, Beckett, Weiss, Bresson, Antonioni, Godard, Resnais, etc). But it would also be unfair to dismiss the essays as mere historical witnesses to the evolution of an influential tastemaker.
by Meša Selimović (1966)
Set in Sarajevo circa 18th century, Death and the Dervish is a first-person narrative account by the dervish of the title, Ahmed Nurrudin. A spiritual leader of a tekke, Ahmed — whose name is apparently given (his real name is never revealed, as are all characters in the book except for Hassan) — considers himself unworthy of the title Sheikh and Nuruddin, a man at an “ugly age… young enough to have dreams, but too old to fulfill any of them.”
by Danilo Kiš (1965)
A semi-autobiographical story, Garden, Ashes is a recollection of Andy Scham, a young child living in Hungary during the World War II. Despite the ubiquitous shadows of Holocaust, Kiš’ masterful composition of vivid, precise minutiae of surrounding details and events, with an intense focus on the (eccentric) father, Eduard Scham, Garden, Ashes evokes the densely atmospheric writings of Bruno Schulz in The Street of Crocodiles.
