RaveThe Boston GlobeUltimately the real energy of Endpapers comes not from Wolff’s impressive reconstruction of his father and grandfather’s biographies, but from the way he adds himself to the narrative, bringing us back to the present ... Endpapers is more than a book of history; it’s a transnational, intergenerational reckoning.
Dubravka Ugresic, trans. by Ellen Elias-Bursać
RavePloughsharesDubravka Ugrešić’s newest collection of essays, The Age of Skin (translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać), opens with fire ... The Age of Skin is discursive, only just held together by the energy of Ugrešić’s singular voice, and it’s a wonderful introduction to the sixteen essays that follow ... As relentlessly critical as [Ugrešić] can be, she is also tender, endlessly curious, and enjoys the company of others. It’s this rare blend of polemicism and heart that makes Ugrešić such a joy to read. Combined with the fact that she’s wickedly funny ... In The Age of Skin, Ugrešić ruthlessly deconstructs modern life, exposing its basest self, and it’s this vision, her insistence on tearing down façades, on seeing through the innocuous, the outwardly innocent, that has made Ugrešić a formidable cultural critic. She demands that we see deeper, even where we refuse to look.
