There is not much wiggle room for ethical equivocation when it comes to the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of decadence: “a process or manifestation of cultural or moral decline/ luxurious self-indulgence”. Not a good thing then. Sean Sheehan What this doesn’t allow for is the easy-going use of […]
Book reviews
Homero Carvalho: “Us writers are a species of god-like creator”
He is from Bolivia and took his first steps in the world of literature in 1981, although he had dabbled since childhood, inspired primarily by the example of his father Antonio Carvalho, who was one of the most well-known intellectuals in the Bolivian Amazon. Viviana Díaz Frías His official […]
Why read Hannah Arendt?
Hannah Arendt, born in 1906 into a German-Jewish secular family, was arrested and questioned by the Gestapo for eight days in 1933. She left Germany illegally and eventually reached New York where she began to learn English. Within a decade she had written her major work, “The origins of totalitarianism”. […]
Painting heaven and earth
Paintings, says the author of the excellently well-illustrated “Heaven on Earth: paintings and the life to come”, are not propositions. They are to be looked at closely, with regard to their form and grammar, and the author proceeds to do just this with four late medieval and early modern artists: […]
Books for young children
Most pages in “Eye spy” consist of large (25.4 by 33 cm) images of different animal faces and, over each creature’s eyes, a small fold-out section which is opened by a flap to reveal a pictorial scene: two white buildings, a Fresian cow, a dog and cat chasing a ball, […]