Reviewed by Christina Ding, a writer. How exciting it must have been for 19-year-old aspiring poet Franz Xaver Kappus to write to Rainer Maria Rilke—a widely recognized German-language poet and novelist and one of his greatest literary inspirations—and receive a response! So began a correspondence from 1902 to 1908, encompassed in part by Letters to a Young Poet, the epistolary novel containing Rilke’s advice to … Continue reading Letters to a Young Poet
Reviewed by Surya Saraf, a writer. “Violence doesn’t have a race, class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.” So says historian Rebeca Solnit in her hit collection of essays published in 2014, Men Explain Things to Me. Yet anti-Semitism begets harassment and violence against Jewish people, Black men are shot on their daily errands, and violent crimes occur most in … Continue reading Men Explain Things to Me
Reviewed by Irene Tsen, a writer. The drugs are endless, and so is the sleep. So Ottessa Moshfegh’s unnamed protagonist in My Year of Rest and Relaxation spends her year in hopes of being reborn when she wakes up. The novel’s protagonist seems to have it all: she’s a rich, white, young, pretty Columbia graduate working in a hip art gallery. Yet there’s something missing, … Continue reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Zenith Review Magazine 