Some extracts from “The Woman Who Waited”, Andrei Makine
‘She is a woman palpably meant for happiness (if only purely physical happiness, mere bodily well-being) and yet so casually, it seems, she has chosen solitude, loyalty to an absent…
Category: russia
William Gerhardie – review of “God’s Fifth Column”, The Dabbler, 2015
Another William Gerhardie piece, this time ten years on from the SAU blog one and covering much of the same ground about his odd kind of fame. The Dabbler had a feature…
William Gerhardie – a perpetually “lost writer” rediscovered again. SAU Blog, 2005
William Gerhardie is a writer whose fame rests on obscurity. Prominent early in his career, and feted by Waugh and Greene as their better, he later became “lost.” Being “lost”…
Soviet Timelessness – from “Le Testament Francais”, Andrei Makhine.
From the novel also known as Dreams of My Russian Summers: I almost leaped up from my stool beside the television. For I understood so perfectly Charlotte’s reasons for being…
Computer games on paper: MiG-25, Colosseum, Mental Mills
Around 1986 my family bought an Amstrad PCW 8256 in Derry. I suppose at this distance it is OK to recall it was hidden under a blanket in the back seat…
from “Bobby Fischer Goes To War”. Edmonds / Eidinow
“There were harsher and potentially more threatening judgments made of [Boris] Spassky.[Boris] Spassky. Baturinskii accused him of being under the sway of ‘objectivist views over the location of his match…
Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyaltov Pass Incident, Donnie Eichar
I first came across the Dyaltov Pass incident some time ago on Wikipedia, probably by following a link on the Wiki page “List of unusual deaths” The incident saw the…
Flies Like Thoughts – Innokenty Annensky (1855-1909)
Flies Like Thoughts Flies, like black thoughts, have not quit me all day … – A N Apukhtin I’ve grown weary of sleeplessness, dreams. Locks of hair hang over…
Séamus Sweeney 