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This year will see many 75th anniversaries relating to the Second World War, and one of the most poignant – the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviets – has already occurred, in late January. We recently received an important addition to Cambridge’s significant holdings about the Holocaust and Auschwitz in particular, in the form of a catalogue of works by David Olere, Ten, który ocalał z Krematorium III (The one who survived Crematorium III), based on an exhibition held at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in 2018-2019.
Olere, a French Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1943, was one of the very few Sonderkommandos to survive the war. His artistic abilities, employed by Nazi personnel to illustrate letters home and produce other artwork, saved him from the regular killing of Sonderkommando generations. Olere was in the death march from Auschwitz in January 1945 and was liberated only in May, in Ebensee. He…
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Hate is Our Enemy
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48H00 BD : les 3 & 4 avril
Vous connaissez le 48H00 BD?
Cette manifestation a lieu dans toutes les régions permet de faire quelque chose d’unique! C’est toute la chaîne du livre et plus de 1500 librairies qui participent à l’action en faveur de la Culture et du 9e art.
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#Classic Animal Farm
Basically Orwell’s response to the Spanish Civil War.
Along with Gillray or maybe Hogarth,
we like rude cartoons of old kings;
overweight, overbearing and bewigged,
breeches bursting, waistcoats straining at buttons
at table, grasping forks thrust
into grotesquely large mouthfuls of whole chicken.
Thus has our Royal Family delighted us
and so it was today as I sat beside
a girl bearing a willow branch or some such.
Behind me a conversation struck up
in praise of books yet denigrating kindles.
Someone spoke of her favourite detective stories,
“Its a pity when you do know,
half way through who done it,” she paused
“but you have to keep onto the end in case
-you haven’t got it right.”
“I like turning the pages,”
replied he who disparaged modern technology.
“Did you see that programme last night?”
“The Windsors”, “The Palace” or some such
“What he got up to – the ageing Duke
and that other one, the Princess-
No!” and he named her Aunt instead
I began to imagine islands, sun-tanned cougars
behind sunglasses…..
He continued in a sadder tone,
“Yes, she couldn’t be with the one
she wanted to be with…” and went on
plaintively and regretfully describing the Royal lady’s lifestyle
and jazzed up episodes and finished somewhat mournfully,
“One or two people got hurt in the meantime, didn’t they?”
And the bus stopped and I got out and walked away pensively.
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#Classic The Quiet American
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Maigret and the Wine Merchant
Paris bistros and good reading- formidable!!
If only I could drink like Maigret. Rum for his colds, beer for his thirsts, plum brandy when he feels a bout of the flu coming on. And he eats like a horse. A thoroughbred horse with his own private chef, that is. Madame Maigret sounds like a wonderful chef.
This novel is about work and how we compensate ourselves for the time we spend at the office. The murder is all about the company run by the victim, the solution is to do with the way the business was run and most of the red herrings come from employees. People often say these books are excellent at describing ordinary melancholy, but Simenon is also sharp to the daily grind and the petty reality of office politics. It’s a very #metoo novel.
Maigret is always at work, in a way few literary characters are. He dreams about his case. He…
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Vaugment cool et tranquille!
Il y a quelques jours, l’artiste Japonais Toku était à Paris pour un concert très intimiste avec le public français. Il a commencé la soirée par quelques mots en français, puis s’est lancé en anglais en s’excusant de ne pas être très bon francophone.
Les reviews de concert ne sont pas vraiment notre spécialité, mais nous avons apprécié ce moment particulier : dans une salle où tous les spectateurs fermaient les yeux et savouraient chacune des notes qui s’envolaient dans l’espace.
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These look great- most interesting.
The Liberation Collection consists of over 3000 books published in French between 1944 and 1946. They all share a common subject – the Second World War – and reflect the interest of the collector for book history (quality paper, limited editions, signed copies, etc.); this aside, they differ widely from each other in the way they treat the subject, what they talk about (or don’t talk about), their format, pictorial content, audience, tone and genre. One way to give an insight into the variety of the collection is through its most striking book covers, most of them having been photographed for our thumbnail project. Here is a random sample taken from books catalogued in 2019:
Fiction
Fiction represents nearly one sixth of the collection. Below are a spy novel, an adventure tale about the life of a fighter pilot and a theatre play about the army draft in France.
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penwithlit 