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Michael Hofmann

Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin, translated by Michael Hofmann

by
June-July 2018, no. 402

Revered in Germany as one of the founders of literary modernism, the equal of Robert Musil and Thomas Mann, Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) has remained something of a mystery to English readers. Some are aware of Berlin Alexanderplatz: The story of Franz Biberkopf, translated by Eugene Jolas soon after its appearance ...

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I can readily see that I am not the intended reader for The Unauthorised Life of Ted Hughes. Born in the year his first book of poems came out (The Hawk in the Rain, 1957); made to read Hughes at school (I preferred Sylvia Plath); a graduate of the same university (Cambridge); my books published by the same publisher (Faber), and sharing (if at all ...

Jennifer Maiden's The Fox Petition: New Poems (Giramondo) conjures foxes 'whose eyes were ghosts with pity' and foxes of language that transform the world's headlines

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Did I fly there? I may have flown there.
Maybe in something with the specifications of a crop-duster.
The Sugar Coast. Everything comes with a name. A name and a nickname.
The Soaked Coast. Bundy. Blue rustle of cane. Home to Rum City Wrecking.

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My office! My office at the Judy! The Judy
at the head of Fortitude Valley – Happy Valley! –
the ex-tea and -coffee warehouse, but reformed, reformed!
The industrial brick carcass full of arty bees,
sphinx of a building couchant on the crest of the hill,
the infra-red elevator mysteriously redolent of cloves,
restaurant smuggled into one corner, café in another,
and the whole dipped in chocolate and tile.

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The ABR FAN Poll

Film-makers are forever squabbling over the Top Ten films of all time – a kind of Raging Bullfight – and the symphonists had their sonorous say recently, when ABC Classic FM invited listeners to nominate their classic 100 symphonies. So we thought it might be fun – instructive too – to poll our readers with regard to their Favourite Australian Novel.

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