The little white attic

1/ Here is a family tree for Hong lou meng that I drew in October, based on the Wikipedia character lists:  Full size: https://pbs.twimg.co...

1/ Because of the pandemic, somehow 2020 seems to have become my year of East Asian classics , starting with 4 Vietnamese works— Văn tế thập...

Rereading Hadji Murad (translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude), I’m reminded of the joy of reading Anna Karenina and War and Peace .  It al...

1/ In the previous blog post, I wrote about a rough sex scene in The Woman in the Dunes .  Near the end of the novel, there’s a rape attempt...

1/ Niki Jumpei is held captive by the villagers and stuck in a ramshackle house at the bottom of a sand dune, with a woman. See what he thin...

1/ The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe was published in 1962. The film adaptation by Hiroshi Teshigahara came out in 1964.  It’s no wonder. ...

See part 1 , in which I wrote about my reading of female authors and the call to read more women.  See part 2 , in which I talked at length ...

Are you curious about The Tale of Genji , Japan’s greatest literary achievement, from the 11th century? Are you thinking about tackling it,...

A few months ago I read and wrote about Truyện Kiều (known in English as The Tale of Kieu ), Vietnam’s greatest literary work ( click here ...

I’m currently reading The Year of Magical Thinking , after finishing Vintage Didion . You perhaps have now noticed that I’m on a Joan Didion...