SECRET GERMANY: Stefan George and his Circle by Robert Edward Norton

Who was Stefan George? If you look him up, you will find out that he was born in 1868 and died in 1933, and that he was a poet. In fact, he was one of the most important and influential poets to have written in German, making him as great as Goethe, Hölderlin or Rilke. […]

THE BEAST’S GARDEN BY Kate Forsyth. Narrated by Jennifer Vuletic.

I am a fan of Kate Forsyth. I love the way in which she takes folk tales and put a new twist on them. I loved Bitter Greens (her take on Rapunzel), and The Wild Girl, her story behind the story of how the Grimm brother’s acquired their tales, from their next-door neighbor Dortchen Wild. […]

Emile Zola’s NANA

NANA, published in 1880 by Emile Zola, is an interesting take on sex-obsessed Paris of the nineteenth century, the Paris that has now become a stereotype for sexual behavior in our own times. The heroine, Nana, is both available and unavailable. She gains notoriety when she bares all and appears on the stage in the […]