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This month we chill out with our Midsummer festival of literature from Scandinavia. See you at the Solstice.
Avatud!
On April 27th the Estonian government took down a statue of a Russian soldier in a small park next to the national library in the capital city of Tallinn. Local Russians, nearly a third of
The Northwest Express
to my wife and to Blaise Cendrars even in our sleep there are cables between us. we are coupled to each other like the railway cars on their way to the sea outside the window
Far from Here
I want to send a dream far from here. The swallows fly high there. Perhaps your wheat ripens and through the yellow oceans of rye a slow humming sound of bread can be heard. This is a
Heart’s Desire
Eliza 812 is a psychiatric computer. All female psychiatric computers are named Eliza, in accordance with a fine old tradition. All males are named Higgins. Eliza is a research project,
How Is One to Hang Up?
It should be well known that the voices can be piercing, but they also have inside curves I can't negotiate They run rings around me, I can't take them I grow smaller and
Let the Small Words Come to Me
Let the small words come to me Don't let the demanding ones stop them If I get everything I have a right to, but not love, then I get too little Praised be the children I will never
Twenty-two Things Not to Be Trusted
Twenty-two things not to be trusted: not night-old ice, not a winter in Skåne with the ice shining and as yet untrodden to a confidence inspiring terra firma. Not winter in
Prelude
After / the plunge through death's whirling vortex, will / a great light unfurl over his head?
from “Out Stealing Horses”
We were going out stealing horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first
It Could be Grass
So now we've begun packing. I've carried empty cardboard boxes home from the supermarket. Erik would rather throw everything into black trash bags. To me that's being sloppy.
The Raffle Ticket
The moment Patrik Ohlsson unfolded the raffle ticket and saw the number for the first time, he noticed the intriguing ambiguity. "Come and look at this, Linn," he shouted to his daughter.
Tweety
A faint sound emerged from the night; or maybe it was an almost imperceptible smell that drifted out of the darkness, soothing somehow, like the smell that comes off of boats and wet wooden
Ambulance
I'm lying on my back in the ambulance, firmly strapped to the stretcher and we're driving very fast through town, somebody's placed an oxygen mask over my mouth, and the man
The Bergkvist Sisters
I’ve had a lot of time lately, and I’ve been thinking about the King and Queen. They were Crown Prince and Princess then, of course, but what if they hadn’t had a son second
from As You Were Saying
The collection As You Were Saying: American Writers Respond to Their French Counterparts presents stories begun by French writers and then responded to by their American opposite numbers.
Book Reviews

“Preliminaries” by S. Yizhar
Reviewed by Tsipi Keller

“The Savage Detectives” by Roberto Bolaño
Reviewed by Alex Wenger
