In this category:

Or see the index

All categories

  1. AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
  2. AUDIO, CINEMA, RADIO & TV
  3. DANCE & PERFORMANCE
  4. DICTIONARY OF IDEAS
  5. EXHIBITION – art, art history, photos, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ready-mades, video, performing arts, collages, gallery, etc.
  6. FICTION & NON-FICTION – books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets
  7. FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY – classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc.
  8. LITERARY NEWS & EVENTS – art & literature news, in memoriam, festivals, city-poets, writers in Residence
  9. MONTAIGNE
  10. MUSEUM OF LOST CONCEPTS – invisible poetry, conceptual writing, spurensicherung
  11. MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY – department of ravens & crows, birds of prey, riding a zebra, spring, summer, autumn, winter
  12. MUSEUM OF PUBLIC PROTEST
  13. MUSIC
  14. PRESS & PUBLISHING
  15. REPRESSION OF WRITERS, JOURNALISTS & ARTISTS
  16. STORY ARCHIVE – olv van de veestraat, reading room, tales for fellow citizens
  17. STREET POETRY
  18. THEATRE
  19. TOMBEAU DE LA JEUNESSE – early death: writers, poets & artists who died young
  20. ULTIMATE LIBRARY – danse macabre, ex libris, grimm & co, fairy tales, art of reading, tales of mystery & imagination, sherlock holmes theatre, erotic poetry, ideal women
  21. WAR & PEACE
  22. ·




  1. Subscribe to new material: RSS

#Biography Archives

· Alice Loxton: Eighteen. A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives · Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers · Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie · Ian Penman: Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors · Julie Gayet: Ensemble on est plus fortes · Annie Ernaux: Le jeune homme / De jongeman · The Italian Invert. A Gay Man’s Intimate Confessions to Émile Zola · Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Paterson · Etty Hillesum: Het verhaal van haar leven door Judith Koelemeijer · The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky · Ernest Potters (1953-2022): fotograaf en artistiek gangmaker · Red, novel by Felicity McLean

»» there is more...

Alice Loxton: Eighteen. A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives

In this unconventional and witty history, award-winning writer and broadcaster Alice Loxton delves into Britain’s past, exploring the country through eighteen notable figures at that most formative age – eighteen.

From a young Elizabeth Tudor facing deadly intrigue at court, to Empress Matilda already changing the fate of nations, Eighteen invites readers to join an eclectic cast of young Britons across the nation and throughout its history.

Filled with fascinating stories of royalty, explorers, writers and entertainers, Eighteen asks what lessons we can learn for modern Britain.

Alice Loxton is one of Britain’s most exciting young historians. She has been a pioneer in bringing history to new audiences through social media, and has a total following of over 2 million across Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. She is an experienced writer and presenter, regularly presenting documentaries on History Hit, Channel 4 and the BBC. She is the author of the acclaimed book UPROAR: Scandal, Satire and Printmakers in Georgian London, nominated for Blackwell’s Book of the Year.

Alice Loxton:
Eighteen. A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives
Publisher: ‎Macmillan; Main Market edition
15 Aug. 2024
Language: English
Hardcover: ‎336 pages
ISBN-10: ‎1035031280
ISBN-13: ‎978-1035031283
Reading age: 18 years and up
Dimensions: ‎15.56 x 3.05 x 23.5 cm
Price: 19,99 euro

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive K-L, FDM in London, History of Britain, Tales for Fellow Citizens


Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers

Celebrated NPR music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of Joni Mitchell in a lyrical style as fascinating and ethereal as the songs of the artist herself.

“What you are about to read is not a standard account of the life and work of Joni Mitchell. Instead, it’s a tale of long journeying through a life that changed popular music: of a homesick wanderer forging ahead on routes of her own invention, and of me on her trail, heading toward the ringing of her voice.” (From the introduction)

For decades, Joni Mitchell’s life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has inspired countless musicians—from peers like James Taylor, to inheritors like Prince and Brandi Carlile—and authors, who have dissected her music and her life in their writing.

At the same time, Mitchell has always been a force beckoning us still closer, as—with the other arm—she pushes us away.

Given this, music critic Ann Powers wondered if there was another way to draw insights from the life of this singular musician who never stops moving, never stops experimenting.

In Traveling, Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys. Through extensive interviews with Mitchell’s peers and deep archival research, she takes readers to rural Canada, mapping the singer’s childhood battle with polio.

She charts the course of Mitchell’s musical evolution, ranging from early folk to jazz fusion to experimentation with pop synthetics. She follows the winding road of Mitchell’s collaborations with other greats, and the loves that emerged along the way, all the way through to the remarkable return of Mitchell to music-making after the 2015 aneurysm that nearly took her life.

Along this journey, Powers’ wide-ranging musings on the artist’s life and career reconsider the biographer’s role and the way it twines against the reality of a fan. In doing so,

Traveling illustrates the shifting nature of biography, and the ultimate contradiction of celebrity: that an icon cannot truly, completely be known to a fan.

Kaleidoscopic in scope, and intimate in its detail, Traveling is a fresh and fascinating addition to the Joni Mitchell canon, written by a biographer in full command of her gifts who asks as much of herself as of her subject.

Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell
by Ann Powers (Author)
Publisher: ‎Dey Street Books
Language: ‎English
June 11, 2024.
Hardcover: ‎448 pages
ISBN-10:0062463721
ISBN-13:978-0062463722
Hardcover
$35.00

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: # Music Archive, #Biography Archives, #Editors Choice Archiv, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Archive O-P, Joni Mitchell


Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him.

Salman Rushdie is the author of fifteen novels—Luka and the Fire of Life; Grimus; Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker); Shame; The Satanic Verses; Haroun and the Sea of Stories; The Moor’s Last Sigh; The Ground Beneath Her Feet; Fury; Shalimar the Clown; The Enchantress of Florence; Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights; The Golden House; Quichotte (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize); and Victory City—and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published five works of nonfiction—The Jaguar Smile; Imaginary Homelands; Step Across This Line; Joseph Anton; and Languages of Truth—and coedited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.

Knife:
Meditations After an Attempted Murder
Author: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: ‎Random House
April 16, 2024
Language: ‎English
Hardcover: ‎224 pages
Price: $28.00
ISBN-10: 0593730240
ISBN-13: ‎978-0593730249
Dimensions: ‎5.73 x 0.91 x 8.53 inches
#1 in Censorship & Politics
#4 in Author Biographies
#60 in Memoirs (Books)

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, Archive Q-R, Archive Q-R, Awards & Prizes, FDM in New York, Salman Rushdie


Ian Penman: Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors

Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, mystery – Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman’s long awaited first original book, a kaleidoscopic study of the late West German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982).

Written quickly under a self-imposed deadline in the spirit of Fassbinder himself, who would often get films made in a matter of weeks or months, Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors presents the filmmaker as a pivotal figure in the late 1970s moment between late modernism and the advent of postmodernism and the digital revolution.

Compelling, beautifully written and genuinely moving, echoing the fragmentary and reflective works of writers like Barthes and Cioran, this is a story that has everything: sex, drugs, art, the city, cinema and revolution.

Ian Penman is a British writer, music journalist, and critic. He began his career at the NME in 1977, later contributing to various publications including The Face, Arena, Tatler, Uncut, Sight & Sound, The Wire, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and City Journal. He is the author of the collections Vital Signs: Music, Movies, and Other Manias (Serpent’s Tail, 1998) and It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2019). Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is his first original book.

Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors
by Ian Penman
Published by Semiotext(e)
ISBN: 9781635901887
Published: May 02, 2023
Paperback
200 pages
$16.95

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive O-P, Rainer Werner Fassbinder


Julie Gayet: Ensemble on est plus fortes

On ne nait pas féministe, on le devient.

Pour cette raison, peut-être, je me suis demandé : Et si c’était moi la femme bafouée, la femme battue, la gamine prostituée, jetée à la rue, la patiente qui souffre d’endométriose, ou la militante harcelée sur les réseaux ?

Si c’était moi celle qu’on humilie, si c’était moi celle qu’on viole ou celle qu’on tue? Je n’ai rien subi de tout ça. Quel droit, alors, ai-je de parler? Et bien leurs droits à elles, justement.

Des droits qui continuent à être, tous les jours, foulés aux pieds.

Et parce qu’il faut encore le dire, le marteler, le hurler, et que je peux (veux) faire entendre ma voix, voici : un peu de moi, pour énormément d’elles”.

J. G. Depuis une dizaine d’années, ses aventures d’actrice et de productrice ont mené Julie Gayet sur les chemins du féminisme, bien avant la vague Metoo. Un féminisme fort, sincère et concret, loin de la posture. Un féminisme qui trouve ses racines au plus profond de sa propre histoire, avec cette certitude chevillée au corps : ensemble, on est plus fortes. A travers les portraits de celles qu’elle admire pour leurs engagements auprès des femmes, elle se livre elle-même ici, en creux, comme rarement. Un ouvrage pudique, tendre, violent, drôle parfois. Absolument nécessaire.

Julie Gayet est comédienne, réalisatrice et productrice. Elle participe à de nombreux films et courts métrages et fonde en 2007 sa propre maison de production, Rouge International. Elle est membre du collectif 50/50 qui vise la parité au cinéma. À titre personnel, Julie Gayet est engagée pour les droits des femmes et la lutte contre les violences dont elles sont victimes. En 2015, elle fonde l’association Info-Endométriose avec le Dr Chrysoula Zacharopoulou. Engagée aux côtés de la Fondation des Femmes depuis le lancement du mouvement #metoo en 2017, Julie Gayet organise chaque année le Gala de la Fondation des Femmes ainsi que le Prix Gisèle Halimi, un concours d’éloquence qui dénonce le sexisme par le verbe ou encore la campagne #RegardeMoiBien.

Ensemble on est plus fortes
Auteur: Julie Gayet
Mathieu Busson (Contributeur)
Éditions Stock, 2023
Collection Essais Documents
Date de parution: 08/03/2023
Broché
252 pages
Dimensions: 13,5 cm × 21,5 cm × 2,1 cm
ISBN: 978-2-234-09233-4
EAN: 9782234092334
Prix: € 19.00

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive G-H, Art & Literature News, AUDIO, CINEMA, RADIO & TV, THEATRE


Annie Ernaux: Le jeune homme / De jongeman

Annie Ernaux: Le jeune homme

En quelques pages, à la première personne, Annie Ernaux raconte une relation vécue avec un homme de trente ans de moins qu’elle. Une expérience qui la fit redevenir, l’espace de plusieurs mois, la « fille scandaleuse » de sa jeunesse.

Un voyage dans le temps qui lui permit de franchir une étape décisive dans son écriture.

Ce texte est une clé pour lire l’œuvre d’Annie Ernaux — son rapport au temps et à l’écriture.

Annie Ernaux née en 1940 est l’autrice de dix-huit livres aux Éditions Gallimard parmi lesquels La place, Passion simple, L’événement, Les années, Mémoire de fille, et dernièrement, Le jeune homme. Elle a reçu le prix Nobel de Littérature en 2022.
Prix littéraire de la fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco (2021)
Prix Nobel de Littérature (2022)

Annie Ernaux
Le jeune homme
Roman
Langue francais
Collection Blanche, Gallimard
Parution: 05-05-2022
48 pages
118 x 185 mm
ISBN: 9782072980084
Gencode: 9782072980084
Code distributeur: G06376
Prix: € 8,00

Annie Ernaux: De jongeman

In De jongeman vertelt Annie Ernaux summier (en in de eerste persoon enkelvoud) over een voorbije liefdesrelatie met een dertig jaar jongere man. Zijzelf is dan al bijna zestig.

In compacte, intense, uiterst efficiënte zinnen zoekt ze naar een antwoord op de vraag wat er in die relatie op het spel stond. Voor haarzelf was dat herleven: zich opnieuw jong voelen, maar ook ingewijd worden in haar eigen verleden.

De jongeman is een sleutel tot het lezen van Ernaux’ werk.

Al haar thema’s komen in deze miniatuur samen: tijd, herinnering, liefde, maatschappij, en hoe haar leven steevast in het teken staat van het nog te schrijven boek.

Annie Ernaux (1940) is een van de belangrijkste hedendaagse Franse schrijvers. Tot haar bekendste boeken behoren De jaren , De schaamte, Het voorval (zeer succesvol verfilmd als L’événement) en Meisjesherinneringen. In 2022 werd ze bekroond met de Nobelprijs voor de Literatuur

De jongeman
Auteur: Annie Ernaux
Vertaler: Rokus Hofstede
Nederlands
Uitgeverij: De Arbeiderspers
Publicatiedatum: 31-01-2023
NUR: 302
Paperback
48 pagina’s
ISBN: 9789029549776
Prijs: € 10,00

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, - Book News, - Bookstores, Annie Ernaux, Archive E-F, Awards & Prizes


The Italian Invert. A Gay Man’s Intimate Confessions to Émile Zola

In the late 1880s, a dashing young Italian aristocrat made an astonishing confession to the novelist Émile Zola.

In a series of revealing letters, he frankly described his sexual experiences with other men—including his seduction as a teenager by one of his father’s friends and his first love affair, with a sergeant during his military service—as well as his “extraordinary” personality.

Judging it too controversial, Zola gave it to a young doctor, who in 1896 published a censored version in a medical study on sexual inversion, as homosexuality was then known. When the Italian came across this book, he was shocked to discover how his life story had been distorted. In protest, he wrote a long, daring, and unapologetic letter to the doctor defending his right to love and to live as he wished.

This book is the first complete, unexpurgated version in English of this remarkable queer autobiography.

Its text is based on the recently discovered manuscript of the Italian’s letter to the doctor.

It also features an introduction tracing the textual history of the documents, analytical essays, and additional materials that help place the work in its historical context.

Offering a striking glimpse of gay life in Europe in the late nineteenth century, The Italian Invert brings to light the powerful voice of a young man who forthrightly expressed his desires and eloquently affirmed his right to pleasure.

Whether you persist in reading it as a proto-naturalist novel (despite the opinions of the editors of this volume) or treat it as a sociological document, The Italian Invert is a classic text of nineteenth-century sexology the interest of which is by no means limited to French (or Italian) studies. (Melanie Hawthorne, Texas A&M University)

Michael Rosenfeld holds two doctorates, one in French literature and civilization from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris 3 and one in French language and literature from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

William A. Peniston is the librarian and archivist emeritus at the Newark Museum of Art, as well as a historian of France. His books include Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris (2004).

Nancy Erber is professor emerita of modern languages and literature at the City University of New York. With Peniston, she edited and translated Queer Lives: Men’s Autobiographies from Nineteenth-Century France (2007).

The Italian Invert
A Gay Man’s Intimate Confessions to Émile Zola
Edited by Michael Rosenfeld with William A. Peniston.
Translated by Nancy Erber and William A. Peniston.
Pub. Date: 5 July 2022
272 Pages
Format: Paperback
Publisher:‎ Columbia University Press
Language: ‎English
Paperback: ‎272 pages
ISBN-10: ‎0231204892
ISBN-13: ‎978-0231204897
List Price: £25.00

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, - Book Lovers, - Book News, - Book Stories, Archive Y-Z, Émile Zola, LGBT+ (lhbt+)


Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Paterson

Exquisitely sharp, deeply humane and brutally hilarious, Toy Fights is a future classic from one of the greatest writers of his generation.

This is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored.

Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate.

When he wasn’t busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of Toy Fights, working with his country-and-western singer dad, screwing up in the Boys’ Brigade, obsessing over God, origami, The Osmonds, stamps, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, failing his exams, playing guitar, falling in love, dodging employment and descending into madness.

While he didn’t manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life – before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London – did, for better or worse, shape who he would become.

Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His previous poetry collections include Nil Nil, God’s Gift to Women, Landing Light, Rain and 40 Sonnets. He has also published two books of aphorism, as well as translations of Antonio Machado and Rainer Maria Rilke. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and all three Forward Prizes; he is currently the only poet to have won the T. S. Eliot Prize twice. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the English Association and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and is currently Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews. Since 1997 he has been poetry editor at Picador Macmillan, and he also works as a jazz musician and composer. He lives in Edinburgh.

Toy Fights: A Boyhood
by Don Paterson (Author)
Memoir
Publisher: ‎Liveright
July 11, 2023
Language: ‎English
Hardcover: ‎384 pages
ISBN-10:‎ 1324093625
ISBN-13: ‎978-1324093626
$27.95

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive O-P, Archive O-P, Art & Literature News


Etty Hillesum: Het verhaal van haar leven door Judith Koelemeijer

Op 9 maart 1941 begint de dan 27-jarige Etty Hillesum een dagboek. Terwijl de nazi’s haar als Joodse vrouw in Amsterdam steeds openlijker vervolgen, getuigt zij van een imponerende geestelijke vrijheid.

Haar aantekeningen over de liefde, erotiek, familierelaties, vriendschap, geloof, zinloze haat en lotsverbondenheid zijn hoogstpersoonlijk, zeldzaam eerlijk, en tegelijkertijd volstrekt universeel.

Sinds de eerste publicatie van haar dagboeken en brieven hebben de geschriften van Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) wereldwijd miljoenen lezers geïnspireerd. Maar wie was zij eigenlijk? Welke vrouw van vlees en bloed gaat schuil achter haar mooie woorden?

Judith Koelemeijer wist een schat aan nog onbekend materiaal te verzamelen. In deze biografie geeft zij een verrassend nieuw perspectief op Etty’s rusteloze jeugd, haar linkse studentenjaren, en haar uiteindelijke keuze om ‘het lot van haar volk te delen’ en niet onder te duiken. Etty Hillesum blijkt iemand met vele gezichten, getekend door een beladen familiegeschiedenis, waaraan zij zich tenslotte tóch weet te ontworstelen.

Etty Hillesum – Het verhaal van haar leven is de meeslepende geschiedenis van een jonge, gepassioneerde vrouw die ook onder de meest gruwelijke omstandigheden trouw bleef aan haar idealen en zichzelf.

Judith Koelemeijer (1967) is schrijver van literaire non-fictie. Zij brak in 2001 door met haar familiegeschiedenis Het zwijgen van Maria Zachea, waarvan meer dan 350.000 exemplaren werden verkocht. Ook haar volgende boeken, Anna Boom (2008) en het autobiografische Hemelvaart – Op zoek naar een verloren vriendin (2013) werden bestsellers. Haar werk werd onder meer bekroond met de NS Publieksprijs en het Gouden Ezelsoor/best verkochte literaire debuut.

Etty Hillesum Het verhaal van haar leven
Auteur: Judith Koelemeijer
ISBN: 9789463821742
512 pagina’s
Uitgever Balans
paperback
€34,95

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive G-H, Archive K-L, Etty Hillesum, Holocaust


The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky

A tender and compellling memoir of the author’s grandparents, their literary salon, and a way of life that is no more.

The House of Twenty Thousand Books is the story of Chimen Abramsky, an extraordinary polymath and bibliophile who amassed a vast collection of socialist literature and Jewish history. For more than fifty years Chimen and his wife, Miriam, hosted epic gatherings in their house of books that brought together many of the age’s greatest thinkers.

The atheist son of one of the century’s most important rabbis, Chimen was born in 1916 near Minsk, spent his early teenage years in Moscow while his father served time in a Siberian labor camp for religious proselytizing, and then immigrated to London, where he discovered the writings of Karl Marx and became involved in left-wing politics.

He briefly attended the newly established Hebrew University in Jerusalem, until World War II interrupted his studies.

Back in England, he married, and for many years he and Miriam ran a respected Jewish bookshop in London’s East End. When the Nazis invaded Russia in June 1941, Chimen joined the Communist Party, becoming a leading figure in the party’s National Jewish Committee. He remained a member until 1958, when, shockingly late in the day, he finally acknowledged the atrocities committed by Stalin. In middle age, Chimen reinvented himself once more, this time as a liberal thinker, humanist, professor, and manuscripts’ expert for Sotheby’s auction house.

Journalist Sasha Abramsky re-creates here a lost world, bringing to life the people, the books, and the ideas that filled his grandparents’ house, from gatherings that included Eric Hobsbawm and Isaiah Berlin to books with Marx’s handwritten notes, William Morris manuscripts and woodcuts, an early sixteenth-century Bomberg Bible, and a first edition of Descartes’s Meditations. The House of Twenty Thousand Books is a wondrous journey through our times, from the vanished worlds of Eastern European Jewry to the cacophonous politics of modernity.

The Book includes 43 photos.

“Sasha Abramsky’s account of his grandfather’s devotion to books and reading is a moving testimonial to the persistance of human curiosity in a world that seems to drift farther and farther from the delight of intellectual pursuits. It is a moving, instructive, astonishing account of one man’s love for the printed word that all readers will appreciate. The House of Twenty Thousand Books deserves twenty hundred thousand readers.”
— Alberto Manguel

Sasha Abramsky was born and raised in the UK, studied politics, philosophy and economics at Balliol College, Oxford, and moved to the US in my early 20s. He has lived and worked in London, New York, and in California. His writings have been published in the Nation magazine, the New Yorker online, the New York Times, Atlantic, Mother Jones, Truthout, Sacramento Magazine, Slate, Salon, and many other publications in the US. In the UK he has written for a number of publications, including the Guardian, the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph, and the New Statesman.

The House of Twenty Thousand Books
by Sasha Abramsky, with a new preface by the author
Publisher: ‎ New York Review Books
Reprint edition 2017
Language: ‎ English
Paperback
376 pages
ISBN-10: ‎ 1681371138
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1681371139
$17.95

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, - Book Lovers, - Book Stories, Alberto Manguel, Archive A-B, Libraries in Literature, Literaire sporen, The Art of Reading


Ernest Potters (1953-2022): fotograaf en artistiek gangmaker

Ernest Potters tijdens zijn eerste solo-tentoonstelling sinds lang, in Luycks Gallery, 2012. (Foto: Joep Eijkens)

Ernest Potters timmerde niet alleen als fotograaf aan de weg, maar was ook jarenlang drijvende kracht en organisator van tal van activiteiten in de Tilburgse kunstwereld. Op 10 augustus 2022 overleed hij na een kort ziekbed.

door Joep Eijkens

Ernest Potters werd in 1953 te Tilburg geboren als zoon van de bekende pottenbakkers Henk en Lies Potters. Hij volgde zijn opleiding aan St. Joost Breda en was sinds 1974 werkzaam als fotograaf/fotojournalist. Vanaf de jaren zeventig werkte hij als freelance fotograaf onder meer voor muziekbladen als OOR en Hitkrant, voor het maandblad Jazz Nu en diverse landelijke dag- en weekbladen. Maar ook voor uiteenlopende (kunst)instellingen en andere opdrachtgevers in Tilburg en daarbuiten, waaronder diverse muziek-, dans- en theatergezelschappen.

Potters fotografeerde talloze theater- en dansvoorstellingen. Tot zijn favoriete onderwerpen hoorden architectuur en muzikanten. Wat dat laatste betreft was hij apetrots op een portret dat hij schoot van zijn idool Frank Zappa.

Ruimte X
Maar Potters was beslist méér dan fotograaf. Zo stichtte hij in 1980 met zijn toenmalige levenspartner, danseres Nora van den Eeckhout, Het Danshuis, gevestigd in de Telexstraat in Tilburg. Het betreffende pand werd later onder de naam Ruimte-X een bekend ‘multidisciplinair kunstenpodium’ waar tussen 1998 en 2012 talloze exposities, voorstellingen en culturele bijeenkomsten plaatsvonden. Potters hoorde bovendien tot degenen die aan de wieg stonden van de succesvolle Werkplaats L’Avventura Tilburg.

Ook kreeg Ernst Potters naam door de kunstexposities die hij elders in de stad organiseerde tijdens de Tilburgse kermis. En door de in literatuur, beeldende kunst, theater en muziek gespecialiseerde uitgeverij teleXpress die hij runde met zijn partner Ingrid Luycks. De producten waren steeds mooi verzorgde publicaties. Zijn eerste foto-expositie had hij in 1976 in het cultureel centrum Boerderij Denissen in Berkel-Enschot. Daarna volgden exposities in binnen- en buitenland.

Qua Vadis
In 2012 sloot Ruimte X de deuren en concentreerde Ernest Potters zich weer meer op zijn werk als fotograaf. Het was in de galerie van Luycks dat hij in datzelfde jaar voor het eerst sinds lange tijd weer solo eigen fotografisch werk exposeerde onder de titel Quo Vadis. Diverse solo- en duo-exposities volgden daarna, eveneens in Luycks Gallery.

Potters timmerde de afgelopen jaren sowieso steviger aan de weg als fotograaf. Zo begon hij eind 2020 op Instagram met een soort dagboek in foto’s van dingen en plekken die hij onderweg tegenkwam. Al dan niet alledaagse voorwerpen en plekken waaraan vrijwel niemand aandacht schenkt: van een weggegooid bierblikje op een hoop straatstenen tot een abstract detail van een stukje architectuur. Alsof hij wilde zeggen dat schoonheid ook op straat is te vinden, als je er maar oog voor hebt.

Ernest Potters maakte ook, en regelmatig in samenwerking met anderen, diverse fotoboeken zoals Hoog-Gaat-Ie. Fotoboek van de Tilburgse kermis met Paul Spapens en Lauran Wijffels, en vorig jaar nog Het nieuwe ritme van Tilburg. Dat was een coproductie met de eveneens Tilburgse fotograaf Wil van Dusseldorp over de metamorfose die de voormalige textielstad onderging sinds de jaren zestig. Potters nam daarin vooral het afgelopen decennium voor zijn rekening, met kleurenfoto’s die hij speciaal voor dit boek maakte. Het werd uitgegeven door stichting De NWE Stijl, waarin Ingrid Luycks één van de drijvende krachten is. Potters was ook de bedenker van tal van opmerkelijke boekconcepten en uitgaven, waaronder De Kanonbal. Requiem voor een wielrenner en dichtbundels van diverse Tilburgse stadsdichters.

Om ideeën zat Ernest Potters nooit verlegen en hij was ook altijd bereid ideeën van anderen de ruimte geven, vaak letterlijk in Ruimte X. Zijn betrokkenheid bij Tilburg was groot en hij zal in die stad worden gemist, maar zijn wereld was eindeloos veel groter dan stad of provincie.

Eerder gepubliceerd in: Brabant Cultureel. Digitaal podium voor kunst en cultuur
© Joep Eijkens, 11 augustus 2022
https://www.brabantcultureel.nl/

•fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, Archive O-P, AUDIO, CINEMA, RADIO & TV, DANCE & PERFORMANCE, In Memoriam, Joep Eijkens, Photography


Red, novel by Felicity McLean

From award-winning writer and journalist Felicity McLean comes Red, a spirited and striking contemporary retelling of the Ned Kelly story

It’s the early 1990s and Ruby ‘Red’ McCoy dreams about one day leaving her weatherboard house on the Central Coast of New South Wales, where her best friend, Stevie, is loose with the truth, and her dad, Sid, is always on the wrong side of the law.

But wild, whip-smart Red can’t stay out of trouble to save her life, and Sid’s latest hustle is more harebrained than usual.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Trevor Healy seems to have a vendetta against every generation of the McCoys.

Told in Ruby’s vivid, inimitable voice, Red is part True Grit, part Blue Murder. It’s a story of police persecution. Of dodgy deals and even dodgier cars.

And of a family history that refuses to stay in the past. A sharp, provocative and savagely funny novel.

Felicity McLean’s debut novel, The Van Apfel Girls are Gone, has been published in more than half a dozen countries. It was a Barnes & Noble ‘Discover Great New Writers’ pick in the US, and was shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards, and longlisted for the UK’s Dagger Awards, and the Davitt. Her book, Body Lengths, co-written with Olympian Leisel Jones, was Apple Books ‘Best Biography of 2015’ and won the 2016 Australian Book Industry Awards ‘Reader’s Choice’ for Small Publisher Adult Book of the Year.

# new book
Red
by Felicity McLean
Novel
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 256
Published: 18th May 2022
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9781460755099
ISBN-10: 146075509X
$21.22

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: #Biography Archives, - Book News, - Bookstores, Archive M-N, Art & Literature News


Older Entries »

Thank you for reading Fleurs du Mal - magazine for art & literature