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Contributor

Emma Garman

Contributor

Emma Garman

Emma Garman is a writer living in the UK.

Articles by Emma Garman

Q & A with Aliefka Bijlsma
By Emma Garman
The Consul General’s Wife is the second novel from author and screenwriter Aliefka Bijlsma, now available in a sensitive translation from the Dutch by Kate Brown. The sad and tragi-comic tale of…
Walser’s Berlin Stories: Primer for a Singular Landscape
By Emma Garman
In 1933, the posthumously acclaimed Swiss writer Robert Walser was living at the sanatorium he had entered four years earlier with severe depression, hallucinations, and writers’ block. Then in…
“The Truth About Marie” by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
By Emma Garman
“The good, the admirable reader,” said Vladimir Nabokov in his Lectures on Russian Literature, “identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived…
PEN World Voices 2011: Amelié Nothomb in conversation with Buket Uzuner, Friday April 29th
By Emma Garman
Here’s a tip for writers eager to cultivate a rarified air of eccentricity: regardless of the weather, wear a big hat! According to Amelié Nothomb, whose outré headgear is her trademark—today,…
À Tout de Suite, written and directed by Benoît Jacquot
By Emma Garman
In honor of the new Movies Issue, we’re writing about our favorite foreign films; my choice: À Tout de Suite (2005), written and directed by Benoît Jacquot. Conceptually, À Tout…
Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig
By Emma Garman
In his memoir, The World of Yesterday, published the year after his suicide in 1942 at age 60, Stefan Zweig wistfully recalls the sense of security that “made life seem worthwhile” and that…
“The Sexual Life of an Islamist in Paris” by Leïla Marouane
By Emma Garman
As first lines go, that of Leïla Marouane’s second novel and debut in English, The Abductor (2000, translated by Felicity McNab), is a masterpiece of concision and intrigue: “My father…
PEN World Voices: Atiq Rahimi in Conversation with Lila Azam Zanganeh
By Emma Garman
Afghan author Atiq Rahimi’s Prix Goncourt-winning and internationally acclaimed novel, The Patience Stone—an excerpt of which he read during the festival’s opening night extravaganza—is…
PEN World Voices: David Almond and Sofi Oksanen in Conversation with Rakesh Satyal
By Emma Garman
“The act of writing is an act of exploration, an act of discovery…and that’s what growing up is,” mused British children's author David Almond on Friday, when he appeared…
I Come From There: New Plays from the Arab World at PEN World Voices Festival
By Emma Garman
At the Martin E. Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center yesterday afternoon, readings of two works by young playwrights—presented by the British Council and London’s Royal Court Theatre,…
“Purge” by Sofi Oksanen
By Emma Garman
Aliide Truu, the warped murderess and tragic victim at the center of Sofi Oksansen’s astoundingly ambitious novel Purge, is an elderly woman when we meet her in the opening chapter. Living alone…
“The Patience Stone” by Atiq Rahimi
By Emma Garman
In Afghanistan—where, eight years after the toppling of the Taliban by US and allied troops, women are still routinely arrested and jailed for “running away” or for adultery, where current…
“The German Mujahid” by Boualem Sansal
By Emma Garman
It's common knowledge that, at the end of WWII, many German war criminals fled from justice via “ratlines” to South American countries. Less notorious, though, are the Nazis who, like…
The Most Beautiful Book in the World: Eight Novellas
By Emma Garman
The Most Beautiful Book in the World: Eight NovellasBy Eric-Emmanuel SchmittEuropa EditionsContemporary French literature outclasses all other nationalities when it comes to melding the popular and the…
Review: “A Girl Made of Dust” by Nathalie Abi-Ezzi
By Emma Garman
Writing literary fiction with a child's point-of-view is not a job for the faint-hearted; to construct a compelling narrative with only a linguistically-limited and innocent voice as a conduit is…