by Walter Kraut | Jul 16, 2021 | Featured book
This might very well be the first book I fell in love with. My parents had a copy of this book on their shelves – like pretty much everyone in the Netherlands at that time. I couldn’t read it yet, or not well enough to make sense of it all, but I understood that it...
by Walter Kraut | Apr 19, 2021 | Book of the week, Featured book
When Delmore Schwartz (December 8, 1913 – July 11, 1966) started out in the late 1930s, he was seen by many as the future of serious literature and praised by luminaries such as T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. He never really fulfilled this...
by Walter Kraut | Jan 21, 2021 | Featured book
It’s always a bit of a disappointment when you find out that an autobiography by someone you admire has been ghostwritten. You expect it of certain celebrities, but not of people who are known for their literary output or intellect. It would’ve been a shock to find...
by Walter Kraut | Sep 10, 2020 | Featured book
It’s no surprise that Graham Greene was so keen on Shusako Endo’s novel Silence. ‘In my opinion one of the finest novels of our time,’ he is quoted on the dust jacket of the UK first edition. The novel must have reminded him more than a little bit of his own novel The...
by Walter Kraut | Aug 25, 2020 | Featured book
Malcolm Lowry famously worked on several texts at the same time and was rarely satisfied with his own writing. During his lifetime Lowry managed to finish ‘only’ two novels: his debut Ultramarine (1933) and – fifteen years later – his masterpiece Under the Volcano...
by Walter Kraut | Aug 18, 2020 | Featured book
It is rare for a proof copy to be reprinted, but this was the case with J.G. Ballard’s 1987 novel The Day of Creation. Our copy states: ‘This early proof is reproduced from the author’s uncorrected and unedited typescript. Nothing should be quoted from this...
