All reviews copyright 1984-2007 Evelyn C. Leeper.
KAFKA IN BRONTËLAND AND OTHER STORIES by Tamar Yellin
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/05/2007]
KAFKA IN BRONTËLAND AND OTHER STORIES by Tamar Yellin (ISBN-13 978-1-59264-153-6, ISBN-10 1-59264-153-9) is a collection of thirteen Jewish-themed stories--but also literature-themed. So we have a Jewish Odysseus, a Kafka living in Yorkshire, a mystery man who loans the narrator a copy of THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA, and so on, including the final piece, "A Letter from Josef K." Since Yellin herself is a Jew raised in Yorkshire, she understands how to meld the various cultures, and has a gift for language that makes the stories a joy to read.
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THE HAUNTED TRAVELLER by Barry Yourgrau:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/30/2004]
I finally read Barry Yourgrau's THE HAUNTED TRAVELLER, which are a series of vignettes told by a traveler. I would describe this as magical realism in the style of Lisa Goldstein's TOURISTS or some of Jorge Luis Borges's works. It was also more what I expected Ursula K. LeGuin's CHANGING PLANES to be (and wasn't).
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