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It is July 7, 1647. Dawn spills over the Piazza de Mercato in Naples as the fish sellers and vendors gather for the day’s trade. Grain merchants, money lenders, bakers, fruiterers, poets, butchers, vagabonds, jewellers, thieves, scoundrels, acrobats, bandits, travellers, smugglers, spies, assassins. Worshippers head to the Carmelite Santa
Donna Tartt’s Southern Gothic opus begins with an inexplicable murder of a young innocent boy in the family yard. It’s this memory that haunts his young twelve-year-old sister, Harriet Dufresnes. A brazen child so obstinate and argumentative, she makes Scout Finch look like a lackadaisical underachiever. Our young
It’s a sparkling day. Brilliant blue skies, tufts of white clouds, two hulking armoured trucks lined with armed immigration agents in full military fatigues trundle through the downtown fashion district toward a clothing wholesaler. Screaming alarms and sirens, lights thrashing red and blue. The sides of the trucks are
Michel Houellebecq’s “Annihilation” turns its way through dull romance, empty politics and day-to-day domesticity. Weaving through economic collapse, moral decline, and existential angst in a near-future France. It is surprisingly unironic. Tinged with gentle, unexpected tenderness. Like many of Houellebecq’s novels it begins with the end of a
Every morning jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is you. After the explosion, spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.