Terrible things happen every day, among the most terrible the things that human beings do to each other. In Nigeria, Boko Haram separatists have just assaulted a village and left hundreds, perhaps thousands dead. In Florida a man has just thrown his five-year-old daughter off a 65-foot-high bridge, an act so unbelievable and sickening that …
By now 2013 is a fast-diminishing reflection in history’s rear view mirror, mostly ignored as we focus on the traffic up ahead. There’s a new Murakami novel looming on the horizon like an eighteen-wheeler, and closer down the road is a nimble little hybrid fueled by an unearthly imagination, Lydia Davis’s latest story collection. The literary highway is …
“This grand Icelandic epic is one of my favorite novels. Steeped in myth and darkly comic, the story involves an improverished sheep farmer’s heroic but ludicrous battle for independence from the large-scale farmers, bankers and politicians that exploit the peasants at every opportunity. The farmer’s absurd stubornness is matched only by his daughter’s struggle to …
