The little white attic

1/ The quote in the headline comes from chapter 53, when Cide Hamete Benengeli talks about the end of Sancho’s government, and about “the sw...

1/ We generally don’t think about how difficult it is to create a character with contradictions till we come across some bad writing—a book,...

1/ I don’t understand people who call Don Quixote unreadable or boring.   ““If you were the devil, as you say and as your appearance revea...

As I talked about my favourite centuries , one person said his was the 20th century. That’s a good answer. Just cinema and photography are g...

( Saint Francis in Meditation by Francisco de Zurbarán, one of my favourite paintings at National Gallery, London) For a long time, my favo...

1/ Part 2 is even greater than Part 1.  As written in the previous blog post, in Part 2, Cervantes plays more with the form, with unreliable...

1/ I love Cervantes’s wit. Quite early on in Part 2, he doesn’t just have Don Quixote and Sancho Panza talk about existence of Part 1, but h...

It's been a while since I posted photos of myself on the blog, but yesterday I got some nice photos among the bluebells, so why not?  Lo...

I have just realised that today is exactly 15 years since my mum and I left Vietnam. Haven't returned since. Most likely can't retur...

April is to me full of sad associations.  Last year, I was going through a difficult time. So I went through one Chekhov volume after anothe...