“Writing,” Elena Ferrante tells us in her engaging, slyly disruptive new collection of essays, expertly translated by Ann Goldstein, “is entering an immense cemetery where every tomb is waiting to be profaned.” The tombs, Ferrante suggests, are filled with our literary patriarchs, the great men who have dominated literature since writing began. The profaners are …
UP AND DOWN THE GAZA STRIP WITH DERVLA MURPHY My August Column at Bookslut
There have been many great female travel writers -- Margery Kempe (c. 1373-1438) wrote about her extensive pilgrimages to holy sites in Europe and Asia; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), the wife of the British ambassador at Constantinople, described life among the privileged in the Ottoman Empire; botanist Mary Kingsley (1862-1900) chronicled her travels through …
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