A man in a boater hat and waistcoat holds up a small blue book — Overture from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust — with a magnifying glass raised in his other hand, peering over the top of it with a look of studied concentration.

A small paperback book with a deep blue cover, titled Overture from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. A cut-out portrait of a young Proust is printed in vivid green at the centre. Published by PDR Press, Mini series, #001.

Our first PDR Press Mini: The perfect pocket Proust — the spellbinding opening section of Swann’s Way, including the most famous conjunction of cake and tea in 20th-c fiction.⁠

Available for 25% off in our pre-sale (until April 29), along with 2 other titles publicdomainreview.org/shop/pdr-pre...

Hilda Hoy: ‘Well, I exist. Surely there are other people like me out there.’ The journalist discusses her new memoir, MOTHER TONGUE

Hilda Hoy might just be able to change the way you think about multilingualism, migration and motherhood – I had a wonderful time talking with her about her memoir MOTHER TONGUE, just out from @windandbones.com.

“I am not censoring myself at all”: Mudar Al-Khufash at the Berliner Ringtheater Palestinian-German artist Mudar Al-Khufash brings his lecture-performance Dialectics of Erasure to the Berliner Ringtheater. It runs through Sunday April 19.

"My god, it took a genocide for people to want to know what's going on."

This weekend, Mudar Al-Khufash is staging his lecture-performance Dialectics of Erasure at the Berliner Ringtheater.

@return2sanders.bsky.social spoke to him for HEIST

www.heistberlin.com/i-am-not-cen...

Broken Ground: *The Fall of the House of Usher* (1928) A modernist adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe. One of the first avant-garde films from America.

Wrote about the U.S.'s first experimental film, which is about twice as experimental as you're imagining and was shot in a barn by a group of amateurs:

Three PDR Press Minis booklets displayed on a light grey background, showing covers for Proust's "Overture from Swann's Way" (navy blue), "A Dictionary of Victorian Slang and Phrase" by J. Redding Ware (light blue), and "Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched" by May Sinclair (green), alongside text announcing a pre-sale with 25% off until April 29th.

🥳 Introducing PDR Press Minis — beautifully produced, pocket-sized editions of public domain texts.

Our first three titles are on pre-sale now at 25% off — $9 each, or all three for $33 inc. shipping: publicdomainreview.org/shop/pdr-pre...

Three small booklets fanned out on a dark surface — numbered #001, #002, and #003 — in navy, pale blue-grey, and vivid green, with dramatic raking light casting deep shadows across their covers. Part of the PDR Minis series.

Tomorrow...

read my full review of LÁZÁR—which is out in the U.S. today, and which NDR sassily noted has "zu viel Schlaumeierei"—in the world's best central-European-books-focused publication, THE AUFLAUF.

theauflauf.substack.com/p/april-book...

April Books: Zaqtan, Mehr, Biedermann New poetry from Ghassan Zaqtan, Mariella Mehr's short prose, and a novel by Nelio Biedermann—plus some informative verse

A wonderful set of reviews: @ajbwells.bsky.social on poems from Palestine's greatest living poet; @return2sanders.bsky.social on unsettling short prose from the Yenish writer; and @biettetimmons.bsky.social on the book we're all supposed to be reading.

(Plus our gossip columnist goes lyrical.)

Rowlandson watercolour showing a skeleton figure holding a lantern looming over two grave robbers lifting a shrouded corpse from an open coffin inscribed "Resurgam", in a churchyard at night.

NEW ESSAY – Roger Luckhurst exhumes the history of body snatching and burial Reform in 19th-century Britain — publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-gr...

Read a bit of my Graveyards book on Public Domain Review! Just in time for Easter 🐣👇👇👇

The Great Majority: Body Snatching and Burial Reform in 19th-Century Britain As populations flocked to city centres in the 19th century, church cemeteries began to overflow with the dead. Roger Luckhurst exhumes the history of this period, when anatomists fuelled a body-snatch...

Death was a big business in nineteenth-century London: between body-snatchers and unscrupulous start-up cemeteries, everybody was hustling the departed for cash.

A real pleasure to publish this essay by @theprofrog.bsky.social, adapted from his wonderful new book about the history of the graveyard.

Before the haystacks and water lilies, the teenage caricatures of Claude Monet: publicdomainreview.org/collection/claude-monet-...

“Wretches, Speak Evil of Me”: Goethe and Schiller’s *Xenions* (1896 edition) One of the most elaborate works of literary insult ever written.

In 1896, the great German Romantics Goethe and Schiller teamed up for their very first joint project: writing 675 bitchy poems. "These brisk verses, revering the good, will annoy the philistine, / Ridicule bigots, and smite hypocrites, as they deserve." (Philistines were, indeed, annoyed).

Doing Impressions: Monet’s Early Caricatures (ca. late 1850s) Moneymaking caricatures by a teenage Monet, before he turned to Impressionism.

Monet apparently got his start doing caricatures – he later said that if he had stuck with it, he would have become a millionaire:

Here it is, My First Fiction Publication. Big 🩷 to the Auflauf gang. You should subscribe!

Short fiction by Katy Derbyshire and Roxie Perkins ‘Jane’s Day’ and ‘I Am Its’

"In the garden, they play at naming people. What’s your brother’s name? What’s your sister’s name? What’s your name? And what’s my name?"

Such a pleasure to publish two short stories, by @katyderbyshire.bsky.social and Roxie Perkins, each about taking care of something that somehow takes over you.

Alien Nation | Sydney Review of Books From Berlin, Alexander Wells pays homage to Antigone Kefala (1931-2022). Attuned to migrants’ sense of displacement, Kefala’s writing, Wells argues, brought a new sensitivity to the alienating effects...

I wrote about the poetry and prose of Antigone Kefala, one of the Great Australian Writers of all time >>

sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essays/alien...

I'm looking to interview a few people who have experience working in the US TV industry as research for my next novel. If you are or know such a person, please get in touch!

Ken Krimstein: ‘I wanted to look at Hannah from the other end of the telescope.’ The New Yorker cartoonist talks about Hannah Arendt on the page and stage

"I like comics because it’s kind of a bastard medium, and I think graphic narrative theater is too. It’s the vision."

Ken Krimstein talked to @return2sanders.bsky.social about writing novel about Hannah Arendt – and then seeing it become a play at the Deutsches Theater.

my first for HEIST, a new, must-read publication if you're interested in English-language news in Berlin.

"Herland" (1915) imagined a utopia without men — collective motherhood, no war, no jealousy. But Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist vision was a product of its time as much as a challenge to it: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/herland/

HEIST is a worker-owned online magazine, founded by writers and editors who spent years in Berlin’s media landscape and felt something essential was missing.

Launching soon.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s *Herland* (1915) A utopian novel where men are no longer necessary.

In HERLAND, Charlotte Perkins Gilman asks the question: what if every man in a remote Andean society died and the women then discovered how to reproduce by parthenogenesis? Her answer: that would be really great actually. My latest for @publicdomainrev.bsky.social

the best new books publication the western hemisphere is THE AUFLAUF: theauflauf.substack.com

subscribe to the auflauf! undoubtably berlin's premier gossip-mongering literary review!

March Books: McDonald, Franck, Ismaïl Poems by Matthew McDonald and novels from Julia Franck and Agri Ismaïl, plus some gossip from our new correspondent.

Another great set of books this month: Matthew McDonald's debut poetry collection @ajbwells.bsky.social; Julia Franck's autobiographical novel @return2sanders.bsky.social; and Agri Ismaïl's account of dislocation and late capitalism @brynstole.bsky.social. Plus some EXPLOSIVE new gossip...

Imagined Futures: Early Sci-Fi and Electric Visions Podcast Episode · Object · February 23 · 29m

We are partnering with Object podcast for its new season, Imagined Futures, exploring the visual culture of retrofuturism. First episode — Early Sci-Fi and Electric Visions — is out!
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

Poor Ghost! by Gabriel Flynn being held up by a bookseller at Blackwells

haven't done any self-promo in a while but it's payday and everyone's talking about Manchester so... if you're looking for a novel to read this weekend, pick up a copy of Poor Ghost! from your local bookshop.

The ONLY debut novel set in Manchester to be published in 2025 (as far as I'm aware)

Oi quick question! What's a great opening? For an extra scoop of Auflauf, we asked some mates how best to begin.

We asked some friends, too:

What's one of the great openings to a story, poem, novel or essay?