Book Reviews

Review: THE MEASURE OF DARKNESS by Liam Durcan
|

Review: THE MEASURE OF DARKNESS by Liam Durcan

It is this sort of layered questioning early in the novel where The Measure of Darkness is at its strongest and most emotionally resonant—who are you if the very skill that has been your reason for existence has been taken from you? And on a secondary level, what it is like to rationally know that your own perceptions and the basis for your own experience can no longer be trusted—to be told of, but to not actually experience the ways in which your perception is flawed?

Review: A DOUBTER’S ALMANAC by Ethan Canin
|

Review: A DOUBTER’S ALMANAC by Ethan Canin

A Doubter’s AlmanacEthan CaninRandom House, Feb 2016576 pp; $28 Mathematicians toil in obscurity, often for years, at work that will probably come to nothing. It doesn’t take a Fields Medalist to understand why a novelist, that most uncertain toiler of all, would be drawn to such a plight. Milo Andret, the genius at the center…

Review: THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS by Eric Weiner
|

Review: THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS by Eric Weiner

The author of The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places, from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley says our ideas about creativity underestimate the importance of place. But how did creative clusters arise in such varied cultures: Renaissance Florence, The Song Dynasty, Edinburgh during the Scottish Enlightenment, Vienna at the times of Mozart and Freud? Was it just dumb luck? Something in the water?

Review: İSTANBUL İSTANBUL by Burhan Sönmez, translated by Ümit Hussein
|

Review: İSTANBUL İSTANBUL by Burhan Sönmez, translated by Ümit Hussein

İstanbul İstanbulBurhan Sönmez, translated by Ümit HusseinOR Books, May 2016192 pp, $18 Unlike in New York, where managing to live in the city for ten years grants one the status of being a New Yorker, rarely will you meet a person living in Istanbul who will be identified as an İstanbullu. The stakes are much…