CATEGORIES
Kategorier
Food & Drink
Taste of the Holidays
Russia's Munchausens
The Legendary Baron Celebrates 300 Years
In the Winter Palace
In this prologue to Alpsten’s new historical fiction novel, Tsarina, we meet Catherine I at the critical turning point in her life: the death of her husband Peter I (the Great).
All That Remains
Tracing own family lineage back to 1667
“Finger Printing” Turquoise
Answering the Question of Provenance
Rumaan Alam – Leave the Expectations Behind
In his third novel, Leave the World Behind, published in october by Ecco, Rumaan Alam delivers, a propulsive narrative that speaks to the challenges and crises of the moment – racial injustice, environmental catastrophe, sheltering in place– while defying any expectations of what a novel written by a gay indian american man should be.
Ever Thought About Breaking Free, Abandoning Your Responsabilities, Running Away From Your Life?
Toby Dorr's Great Escape
Rumaan Alam – Delusions of Whiteness
In Rumaan Alam’s new thriller, a white family staying at a Hamptons Airbnb is startled when the Black owners knock on the door.
Readings
Chicks Rule the Screen Russian women shine in a fresh TV series
Life is just a bowl of…Raspberries?
MID-JULY CAME ON CHILLY AND WITH RAIN TO SPARE, BUT month’s end was suddenly dry and warm. That gave the wild raspberries, which usually ripened in early August, an unexpected influx of the mysteriously delicate juice that make them so very different from the fragrant but bland garden raspberries. So the gals, without so much as a word to each other, started making forays into the closest of the raspberry patches that in the past couple of years had run rampant over the felled areas of the forest. After the nearest mile or two had been picked clean, they put their heads together and started going in threes, in fives, because the forest doesn’t care for any tomfoolery.
Russian Chronicles
An illustrated page from the Russian Chronicle, showing the Battle of the Ugra River.The “Battle” of the Ugra River
Under Review
GOOD CITIZENS NEED NOT FEAR
In Search of Terra Incognita
The risk one runs in exploring these unknown and Icy Seas is so very great, that I can be bold to say, that no man will ever venture farther than I have done and that the lands which may lie to the South will never be explored. ~ British Captain James Cook
LIFE IN ISOLATION
The universal quarantining and self-isolating due to COVID-19 has put millions of people in something of a predicament. Every day is the same as the one before, and sometimes we can’t even get together with our closest family members. But for a few, being solitary is a way of life. And so we decided to touch base with people in remote corners of Russia who, because of their jobs or the unique features of their culture, socialize with only a narrow circle of people, yet somehow never feel lonely.
Food & Drink
How to Start a Fall Day
Culture & Critics - “How Did I End Up Like This?”
Seamus Heaney’s journey into darkness
Essay – “No Novel About Any Black Woman Could Ever Be the Same After This”
That’s how Toni Morrison described Gayl Jones’s first book in 1975. Jones has published to great acclaim and experienced unspeakable tragedy. Now she is releasing her first novel in more than 20 years.
Writing in Spanish Elevates Academia
An estimated fifty-three million Spanish speakers live in the United States.
Hashtag Highlights Anti-Black Bias
The month of June brought the continuation of daily protests around the United States, and the world, in recognition of violence against Black people and the importance of Black lives.
Nate Marshall – Transformation
In his second collection, Finna, Nate Marshall explores the failures and triumphs of language, the power of community, and abolition as a poetic praxis.
What to Do About William Faulkner
A white man of the Jim Crow South, he couldn’t escape the burden of race, yet derived creative force from it.
David Coppereld 's Wild Ride
Armando Iannucci’s mad, loving, and brilliant adaptation of Dickens’s novel
Looking For Frederick Douglass
How a visit to his birthplace helped me understand this moment in America
Anubian Kingdom Rises
Excavations at a city on the Nile reveal the origins of an ancient African power
What a Dame!
The late Vera Lynn – Oldie of the Year in 2018 and a great friend to the magazine – wrote her last piece for us in May, aged 103
Profitable Wonders: Batting for bats
Besides elegantly wielding his bat at the crease, former England Captain David Gower is a long-standing admirer of the other, flying version.
Christopher Robin did adore his bear
He told me he loved Winnie-the-Pooh – and his father, AA Milne
A Plague is an Apocalypse But It Can Bring a New World
The meaning of this one is in our hands.
Under Review
BOOKS FOR THE GREAT PAUSE
The Romance of the Earth
Half a century ago, the profession of geologist was both popular and revered in Russia, shrouded in a halo of romance and adventure. Indeed, it was not unusual for the lives of these explorers of subterranean mysteries to be immortalized in motion pictures, or for songs to be written about them.