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Kafka: The Years of Insight

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  Culture | Franz Kafka Nervous brilliance A definitive biography of a rare writer Save Share Jul 27th 2013 | 4 min read Kafka: The Years of Insight. By Reiner Stach. Princeton University Press; 682 pages; $35 and £24.95. Buy from Amazon.com , Amazon.co.uk IN 1915 a short story called “The Metamorphosis” (“ Die Verwandlung ”) was published in a small German magazine. It told the story of Gregor Samsa, a salesman who wakes up one morning to find that he has turned into an enormous bug. The author, Franz Kafka, was a middle-ranking civil servant working in Prague. He would die less than ten years later, a little-known author of three novels and several shorter works. But “The Metamorphosis”—perhaps 50 pages long—would go on to inspire countless stage adaptations and doctoral theses and scores of subsequent writers. The story, along with the novels “The Trial” and “The Castle”, ensured Kafka’s place as one of the most important writers of the 20th century. “Kafka: The Years of Insig...
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A Nobel prize in literature for Laszlo Krasznahorkai

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  Culture | The man from Gyula A Nobel prize in literature for Laszlo Krasznahorkai  The Hungarian writer is known for his post-modern dystopian fiction. But his work is not all doom and gloom Save Share Summary Illustration: Getty Images / The Economist Oct 9th 2025 | 3 min read O N OCTOBER 9TH the Swedish Academy anointed Laszlo Krasznahorkai the newest Nobel laureate in literature , saluting the Hungarian writer’s “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”. That citation underlines a received idea of the 71-year-old novelist and essayist as a dour prophet of disorder and disaster. It is true that no reader will ever go to Mr Krasznahorkai’s fiction for a quick light read: his serpentine sentences can wind their way across several pages. But to view him as a dystopian doomsayer narrows the writer and the man. His prose holds a rich vein of gallows humour; he sees literature as a bulwark against cruelty and chaos. ...
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RUSSIA THE WILD EAST

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  Norilsk: as the prisoners of the Gulag remember it Survivors   Tình Trại "Tình Trại" là một trong những cuộc phỏng vấn những kẻ sống sót từ trại tù Norilsk. Angus Macqueen, tác giả-người phỏng vấn, là một nhà làm phim tài liệu (phần lớn cho đài BBC), chuyên về Liên-bang Xô-viết và Đông-Âu. Bài viết lấy từ tạp chí Granta 64, Winter 98, đặc biệt về Nga-xô: Miền Đông Hoang Dã. Một xứ sở rộng lớn nhất: một phần sáu đất đai địa cầu. Nơi máu đổ nhiều nhất: Trước tiên, là cách mạng 1905, bị đè bẹp bằng máu. Tới cách mạng 1917, thành công, cũng bằng máu. Rồi thời đại Stalinism, với hàng triệu mạng người bị giết, bằng tống xuất, diệt chủng, trại tù; địch thủ của nó: cuộc xâm lăng của Nazi, đã lấy đi chừng 20 triệu công dân Xô-viết. Như Anatol Lieven, tác giả cuốn sách vừa xuất bản, viết về cuộc chiến Chechnya: Bia mộ của Quyền lực Nga: Đối với hầu hết cư dân của nó, Liên-bang Xô-viết (là một điều gì) còn hơn cả một nền văn minh. Còn hơn cả một ấn bản méo mó, hư ruỗng của điều gọi l...
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The Rose of Paracelsus

  The Rose of Paracelsus Jorge Luis Borges August 13, 1998 issue Insolent vaunt of Paracelsus, that he would restore the original rose or violet out of the ashes settling from its combustion… —De Quincey: Writings , XIII, 345. Down in his laboratory, to which the two rooms of the cellar had been given over, Paracelsus prayed to his God, his indeterminate God—any God—to send him a disciple. Night was coming on. The guttering fire in the hearth threw irregular shadows into the room. Getting up to light the iron lamp was too much trouble. Paracelsus, weary from the day, grew absent, and the prayer was forgotten. Night had expunged the dusty retorts and the furnace when there came a knock at his door. Sleepily he got up, climbed the short spiral staircase, and opened one side of the double door. A stranger stepped inside. He too was very tired. Paracelsus gestured toward a bench; the other man sat down and waited. For a while, neither spoke. The master was the first to speak. “I recall...
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