Magnificent Octopus

"To arrive at a bar where the principal spectacle is the clientele..." Reading The Angst-Ridden Executive , by Manuel Vázquez M...

As he reads, his eyes graze each poem's lines like a needle over an LP's grooves, atomizing them into letters, reassembling them int...

Those who claim to know her, or know of her, have talked of poems whose syntax and diction twist language into new shapes, forming tiny brig...

From the entry for Otha Orkkut (1890-1943), poet, translator, and historian, in The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure , edited by ...

Resurrection , by Wolf Haas, is a charming little crime novel. That is, there's very little crime in it, it just zips along from taxicab...

Wolf Haas is the author of a series of comic crime novels featuring private investigator Simon Brenner, a former cop. Three of them are now...

A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. I've heard this phrase thousands of times, often with a hint of humour, referring to v...

Malianov's wife is away, and a friend of hers comes to stay: ...then he poured her another glass of wine. The decision to toast the use...

It took me a long time to read The Graveyard , by Marek Hłasko, despite its being merely 140 pages long. It's dense with politics and...

A corpulent man with a friendly face rose from his seat behind the desk. He had the clay-colored complexion of those who never get enough to...

"Yes, a rack of galoshes. I have been living in this house since 1903. And from then until March 1917 there was not one case — let me u...

"I want to ask you" — here the woman pulled a number of coloured magazines wet with snow, from out of the front of her tunic — ...

I finished Wolf Haas's The Bone Man the other night, and I enjoyed it, but I also have some mixed feelings about it that I'll try t...

The two Rottweilers, very well behaved now — they obey that wisp of a woman, heel, incredible. And you see, that's why I don't like ...

But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educa...

The Madonna of the Sleeeping Cars , by Maurice Dekobra, is a very charming novel written in 1925 and recently reissued by Melville House. ...

These were the happy people of the world. They were amusing themselves. They had done nothing to deserve happiness, but they were happy. Or,...

Brenner and God I read Brenner and God , by Wolf Haas, earlier this summer and thoroughly enjoyed the story and the fresh manner of its tel...

There was never a riotous crowd in front of the abortion clinic, but somehow that silent threat from the church-types was even more menacing...

You should know, there's a right moment for everything. For plants, when to plant them, when to water them, when to harvest them; for an...