Surreal to see this in the acknowledgments of YESTERYEAR. I'd been wondering throughout why the protagonist was dark-haired rather than Ballerina Farm blonde, and seems like it was intentionally to tee up Hathaway to start in the film adaptation. Is this where we're at now?

Fascinating interview by @return2sanders.bsky.social on Herta Müller's poetics, AI, the memory of Communism, and the sticky discomfort of Müller's bad politics:

Copperplate engravings derived from Chinese and Japanese diagrams of acupuncture and moxa points, featured in Willem ten Rhijne’s De Acupunctura (1693). More in our latest post: publicdomainreview.org/collection/de-acupunctura/undefined... And prints here: publicdomainreview.org/shop/search/?...

Wrote about a Dutch East India Company physician's attempt to figure out how acupuncture works – while essentially living on a prison off Nagasaki:

For anyone in & around Berlin: this is the last week to submit to read at our upcoming (6/6) event about Sebald and the various legacies of his work - texts are welcome in any language!! www.lettretage.de/programm/seb...

In the AUFLAUF review mail this month: - Karaoke - Fascist afterlives - Very good literature - Pick-me-girls - Books cost 20c a page now??? - Finally the truth about the Limerick Writers Center theauflauf.substack.com/p/may-books-...

Register now for Wednesday's webinar! us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

I read a bunch of Wolfgang Koeppen and—you know what?—it was really good. Lots more here in the latest issue of our freshly baked literary casserole.

Some great reviews this month: @brynstole.bsky.social on Wolfgang Koeppen's post-war trilogy, @return2sanders.bsky.social on Paul Celan's still-mesmerising ephemera, and myself on Polly Barton's novel of expat life and karaoke and translation:

Gallery Weekend Berlin starts tomorrow. Here’s where to go. www.heistberlin.com/art-heist-gu...

SAVE THE DATE: A panel and reading inspired by WG Sebald, in English, in Berlin, June 6th. How does the past fall upon the present? Who gets mourned and how? Why this constant feeling of vertigo? Feat. Scraton, Kruger, Watts. Submissions NOW OPEN for readers >>> www.lettretage.de/programm/seb...

The Monster of Cracow. One of many strange marvels featured in a beautifully illuminated copy (made for Elizabeth I) of Pierre Boaistuau’s Histoires Prodigieuses. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/histoires-prodigieuses/ (and prints in our shop too).

Two wonderful short pieces by @return2sanders.bsky.social and @marcelkrueger.bsky.social: one about the immanence of early fatherhood, the other about the agonies of facing the past.

P.S. save the date ...

Our first PDR Press Mini: The perfect pocket Proust — the spellbinding opening section of Swann’s Way, including the most famous conjunction of cake and tea in 20th-c fiction.⁠ Available for 25% off in our pre-sale (until April 29), along with 2 other titles publicdomainreview.org/shop/pdr-pre...

Hilda Hoy might just be able to change the way you think about multilingualism, migration and motherhood – I had a wonderful time talking with her about her memoir MOTHER TONGUE, just out from @windandbones.com.

"My god, it took a genocide for people to want to know what's going on." This weekend, Mudar Al-Khufash is staging his lecture-performance Dialectics of Erasure at the Berliner Ringtheater. @return2sanders.bsky.social spoke to him for HEIST www.heistberlin.com/i-am-not-cen...

Wrote about the U.S.'s first experimental film, which is about twice as experimental as you're imagining and was shot in a barn by a group of amateurs:

🥳 Introducing PDR Press Minis — beautifully produced, pocket-sized editions of public domain texts. Our first three titles are on pre-sale now at 25% off — $9 each, or all three for $33 inc. shipping: publicdomainreview.org/shop/pdr-pre...

Tomorrow...

read my full review of LÁZÁR—which is out in the U.S. today, and which NDR sassily noted has "zu viel Schlaumeierei"—in the world's best central-European-books-focused publication, THE AUFLAUF. theauflauf.substack.com/p/april-book...

A wonderful set of reviews: @ajbwells.bsky.social on poems from Palestine's greatest living poet; @return2sanders.bsky.social on unsettling short prose from the Yenish writer; and @biettetimmons.bsky.social on the book we're all supposed to be reading. (Plus our gossip columnist goes lyrical.)

NEW ESSAY – Roger Luckhurst exhumes the history of body snatching and burial Reform in 19th-century Britain — publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-gr...

Read a bit of my Graveyards book on Public Domain Review! Just in time for Easter 🐣👇👇👇

Death was a big business in nineteenth-century London: between body-snatchers and unscrupulous start-up cemeteries, everybody was hustling the departed for cash. A real pleasure to publish this essay by @theprofrog.bsky.social, adapted from his wonderful new book about the history of the graveyard.

Before the haystacks and water lilies, the teenage caricatures of Claude Monet: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/claude-monet-caricatures/

In 1896, the great German Romantics Goethe and Schiller teamed up for their very first joint project: writing 675 bitchy poems. "These brisk verses, revering the good, will annoy the philistine, / Ridicule bigots, and smite hypocrites, as they deserve." (Philistines were, indeed, annoyed).

Monet apparently got his start doing caricatures – he later said that if he had stuck with it, he would have become a millionaire:

Here it is, My First Fiction Publication. Big 🩷 to the Auflauf gang. You should subscribe!

"In the garden, they play at naming people. What’s your brother’s name? What’s your sister’s name? What’s your name? And what’s my name?" Such a pleasure to publish two short stories, by @katyderbyshire.bsky.social and Roxie Perkins, each about taking care of something that somehow takes over you.

I wrote about the poetry and prose of Antigone Kefala, one of the Great Australian Writers of all time >> sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essays/alien...

I'm looking to interview a few people who have experience working in the US TV industry as research for my next novel. If you are or know such a person, please get in touch!

"I like comics because it’s kind of a bastard medium, and I think graphic narrative theater is too. It’s the vision." Ken Krimstein talked to @return2sanders.bsky.social about writing novel about Hannah Arendt – and then seeing it become a play at the Deutsches Theater.

my first for HEIST, a new, must-read publication if you're interested in English-language news in Berlin.

"Herland" (1915) imagined a utopia without men — collective motherhood, no war, no jealousy. But Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist vision was a product of its time as much as a challenge to it: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/herland/

HEIST is a worker-owned online magazine, founded by writers and editors who spent years in Berlin’s media landscape and felt something essential was missing. Launching soon.

In HERLAND, Charlotte Perkins Gilman asks the question: what if every man in a remote Andean society died and the women then discovered how to reproduce by parthenogenesis? Her answer: that would be really great actually. My latest for @publicdomainrev.bsky.social

the best new books publication the western hemisphere is THE AUFLAUF: theauflauf.substack.com

subscribe to the auflauf! undoubtably berlin's premier gossip-mongering literary review!

Another great set of books this month: Matthew McDonald's debut poetry collection @ajbwells.bsky.social; Julia Franck's autobiographical novel @return2sanders.bsky.social; and Agri Ismaïl's account of dislocation and late capitalism @brynstole.bsky.social. Plus some EXPLOSIVE new gossip...

We are partnering with Object podcast for its new season, Imagined Futures, exploring the visual culture of retrofuturism. First episode — Early Sci-Fi and Electric Visions — is out! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

haven't done any self-promo in a while but it's payday and everyone's talking about Manchester so... if you're looking for a novel to read this weekend, pick up a copy of Poor Ghost! from your local bookshop. The ONLY debut novel set in Manchester to be published in 2025 (as far as I'm aware)

What's one of the great openings to a story, poem, novel or essay?

Come along to our Christa Wolf event in Berlin tomorrow to hear @katyderbyshire.bsky.social read from her translations—and more—while we explore Wolf's post-Wall legacy in discussion & texts submitted from all across town >> psst also it's free >> www.lettretage.de/Termine/chri...

ICYMI — was interviewed by @mathildegm.bsky.social for The Auflauf read here: open.substack.com/pub/theaufla...

In the Auflauf's first monthly author interview, @mathildegm.bsky.social dials up @tobiasvryan.bsky.social in his Parisian garret to talk about unrelatable fiction, @minorliteratures.bsky.social, and the Unreal (European) City of his soul ....... theauflauf.substack.com/p/tobias-rya...

@tobiasvryan.bsky.social has written a gross, beautiful, challenging book about a horrible man who won't leave you alone – and I got to talk to him about it for The Auflauf:

interview @ The Auflauf with thanks to @mathildegm.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/theaufla...

Centaurs, dragons, and snail shell houses — just a few of the otherworldly marvels depicted in a 15th-century French manuscript (BnF, Français 22971) illustrated by Robert Testard. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/secrets-de-l-histoire-naturelle/