Why I still read novels

A friend asked me how and why it is I find the time to still read novels despite the fact that none of us have time to do anything these days. In last week’s New York Times Magazine, A.O. Scott penned an interesting meditation on Susan Sontag’s...
Cuba is a metaphor, not a country

Cuba is a metaphor, not a country

Cafe La Habana, where according to legend, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and a group of Cuban exiles planned the Cuban Revolution to take down the Batista Dictatorship. It was also a favorite hangout of exiled Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. Over an Ethiopian dinner with...
Something More Novel

Something More Novel

When Orhan Pamuk published The New Life in 1995 it became the fastest-selling book in Turkish history. (1995 was the same year that Pamuk was tried along with several other authors for his support of Kurdish political rights in Turkey.) The book reads like a cross of...