Sociological fiction
My fiction is often set amid upheavals that have changed the world — or attempted to. Revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements in Latin America, in Welcome to My Contri; the tensions leading to the fall of the Byzantine and rise of the Ottoman Empire in A Gift for the Sultan; or the Franco-Prussian war and the … read more »
Wajda’s Polish saga
A note on academia.edu prompted me to reread this article from 2015. If you have any interest in Poland, or in filmmaking, you may enjoy it. End of a Saga: Andrzej Wajda’s Wałęsa: Man of Hope
Progress & impediments: Why I’m leaving Facebook
Back on January 1, I posted my New Year’s Resolutions, here. Sorry to report less than satisfactory progress on all but one goal, learning German. Thanks to the exercises on DuoLingo, that’s going quite well. I can now read texts much more easily, though still with frequent recourse to the dictionary. However, my main purpose … read more »
Albania!
Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi My rating: 5 of 5 stars ALBANIA! If you haven’t yet read Lea Ypi’s delightful and surprising book about growing up in that eccentric little country, you must! From the death of « Uncle Enver », as patriotic tots like little … read more »
2024: Return of the Man Who Can
The Man Who Can is the most potent and most pragmatic of my alter-egos, the one who solves problems and gets things done, but he has been unavailable, hors de combat for much of this past year. Two overseas trips — to the U.S. in June and Italy in October — interrupted my, and his, work. … read more »