‘A confluence of exile’ [book review]

A review of To the Lake: A Balkan Journey of War and Peace by Kapka Kassabova Travel writing hasn’t usually provided me with much cause for melancholy. Nostalgia, perhaps, or a sense of yearning. It may be that I have recently been reading through a lens shaped by the current state of the world –

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‘Too bad for the facts’ [book review]

A review of The Masochist by Katja Perat, translated from the Slovenian by Michael Biggins ‘If the facts indicate otherwise, then too bad for the facts.’ So begins Katja Perat’s novel The Masochist, newly translated into English by Michael Biggins and published this week by Istros Books. The latest in a line of bold and

‘We are not the space we live in’ [book review]

A review of Catherine the Great and the Small by Olja Knežević, translated from the Croatian by Paula Gordon and Ellen Elias-Bursać I learned briefly about Catherine the Great at school. Eighteenth-century empress, Russia’s longest-serving female ruler: modern, enlightened, feminist – or at least what passed for such things at the time. Change comes to