John Banville | The Nation

New translations of novels by exiled authors Roberto Bolaño and Ismail Kadare explore the bloody crossroads where literature, politics and self-absorption converge.

Party in the Blitz, the final volume of Nobel laureate Elias
Canetti's memoirs, is a chaotic, horribly fascinating memoir of a man
who was a slave to love, an omnivorous intellect and a literary giant.

Adorno said, as we all know, that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. This is not to say, as many imagine, that writing poetry after Auschwitz is to be forbidden, or is impossible.

The question has been asked: Was Franz Kafka human? He seems to have had doubts himself.

John Coetzee's new book reads like a suicide note.