Book review: And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon

Posted on July 13, 2020 by WordsAndPeace

And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon:
Essential Stories,
by Nikolai Gogol
Pushkin Press
Release date ??
very confusing:
05/12/2019 in UK??
04/06/2021 in the US??
224 pages
Classics/Short stories/Russian Literature
Goodreads

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Short stories is far from being my favorite literary genre, to say the least. But knowing that Nikolai Gogol is THE Russian genius in this domain, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to review And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon, an upcoming collection of five of his most famous stories. Click to continue reading

Book review: The Gate

Posted on February 6, 2020 by WordsAndPeace

The Gate
by Natsume Soseki
First published in Japanese in 1910
Translated by William F. Sibley
With an introduction
by Pico Iyer
NYRB Classics
ISBN13: 9781590175873
(different cover)
2012
Literary fiction/Japanese literature
256 pages
Goodreads

In the introduction to my edition, Pico Iyer highlights that “Japanese literature is often about nothing happening, because Japanese life is, too.” So I was expecting The Gate (the last book of the trilogy after Sanshiro and And Then, illustrating what “then” might have happened) to be on a quieter side than the previous two books, but actually, I thought there was a lot happening!

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Book review: And Then

Posted on January 25, 2020 by WordsAndPeace

And Then
by Natsume Soseki
First published in Japanese in 1909
Translated by Norma Moore Field
With an Afterword
by the translator herself
Tuttle Publishing
ISBN13: 9784805311417
2011
Literary fiction/Japanese literature
246 pages
Goodreads

After reading Sanshiro, I realized this was the first book of a trilogy, so now to the second book: And Then.
I read it both for the Japanese Literature Challenge, and for The Classics Club.

It is in this trilogy (Sanshiro; And Then; The Gate), “that we see the emergence of the mature novelist.” If Sanshiro is the story of a timid young man, frightened and paralyzed by the new world he is thrown in, And Then is “about troubled adulthood”, and The Gate about middle age.