Review: Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad When I spent some time in South East Asia, I rather belatedly became aware of the diversity and the complexity of history and politics in the region, and the power exerted by the sea on the livelihoods of people. I picked Lord Jim — a book that I had always wanted to read — in part, due to the hope that it would offer a colonial perspective into the region at the turn of the last century. Compared to many writers of repute, Joseph Conrad’s prose is remote and difficult to read, just for delight. The writing is dense, “hard” and unforgiving. I trudged through every page; Several times, I retraced the pages that…
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Review: Zama (Author: Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen). As a researcher interested in the science of waiting times, I read Zama with great interest to understand how literature treats waiting. Zama is a tale of one man’s slow descent into perdition, a catalog of unfulfilled dreams and airy castles in future, and a compelling narrative of a mind idling in vacuous machinations. Don Diego de Zama is posted in a remote outpost of Asuncion, Paraguay in the late 18th century, separated from his wife and family and the civilized society of Buenos Aires where he aspires to be instead. Zama believes the posting to be a temporary blip in his exalted bureaucratic service — an onerous test of…
Leave a CommentA single step and thousand miles, and all that. As Laozi said. Even if, and especially if, the journey is on a Möbius strip.
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