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The went online yesterday, and is absolutely loaded with reviews of great books.

Of course, in a somewhat self-serving way, I’m especially excited about this issue since it has a of the first Open Letter title:

Being at home in the world, as exile and citizen, likewise defined Russian émigré Nina Berberova: ���Ĵ�ý�I always sympathize with one who flees his nest, even if he flees into an anthill, where it may be crowded but one can find solitude . . . that precious and intense state of being conscious of the world and of oneself.���Ĵ�ý� Ugresic might agree, as she allows The Ministry of Pain to end with a reprieve for Tanja. But what happens when borders and the identities they engender cease to have meaning or, in the case of Ugresic���Ĵ�ý�s Yugoslavia, cease to exist? Ugresic cites the case of Ivo Andrić. Once considered a ���Ĵ�ý�Yugoslav writer,���Ĵ�ý� Andrić was reclassified by a Croatian lexicon in the interest of tidying up the category of domestic literature: He was defined ���Ĵ�ý�by blood (as a Croatian writer), by residence (as a Serbian writer), and by themes (as a Bosnian writer).���Ĵ�ý� The notion that a literary text must bear the burden of identification tags is, for Ugresic, an affront; it entails tacit approval of the idea that ���Ĵ�ý�the field of literature is nothing more than a realm of geopolitics.���Ĵ�ý�

In addition to this review though, there’s a long list of pieces I want to read:

Rick Moody on

Rivka Galchen on

John Freeman on

Britt Peterson on “Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya;”:

Sarah Fay on

Tayt Harlin on

and, Craig Seligman on

And that’s just on the fiction side . . .