The European Review of Books

For weeks I’ve wanted to write a Current Preoccupation, and it just… oh, I want to tell you so badly why you must go and see the movie Blue Heron(2025), but I should not tell you what happens in it!

It’s the big predicament of film-writing. Writing about books is easier. Maybe it is because a movie forces its time on you and a book does not: read...

Day 1

Two coffees in and the day has just begun. I’m on a plane to Portugal and everybody is basically dressed like me: the outdoor-wear. The man sitting next to me has the same pale, not-particularly-coloured shirt, palms on his knees, visibly excited and visibly unsure what to do with himself.

It’s him, me, and dozens of others on this f...

Toco tu boca. Con un dedo toco el borde de tu boca. Voy dibujándola como si saliera de mi mano. My literature teacher reads aloud chapter seven of Rayuela, known to anglophone readers as Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar. I am a high-school girl ready to fall in love, my notes filled with hearts on the margins. Como si tuviéram...

At his first examination by US army doctors following his arrest, Hermann Göring was discovered to have painted his fingernails and toenails bright red. He was addicted to morphine. After he sobered up to present his defence, the highest-ranking Nazi to stand trial at Nuremberg was gloating, manipulative, unrepentant. He often seemed to come out ahead in cross-examinations. ...

Zwijgen is nu een misdaad
(Silence is now a crime)

Bart Slijper

Prometheus, 2026

The Dutch writer and psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden often felt that he was destined to improve the world. In the 1910s, he embarked on another one of his ambitious projects. Van ...