The New Year has always been a merry holiday in my family, even in the worst of times. A decade ago, when I was still editing the Los Angeles Review of Books (which celebrates its fifteenth anniversary this year!), I invited my Belarusian friend Sasha Razor and the brilliant scholar of Soviet media David MacFadyen […]
“Board the Troika of the Past”: Alexander Voloshin Rings in the New Year
When Romain Rolland died in 1944, English lost a moral voice it had never owned, yet deeply absorbed. Through translation, his pacifism and ethical clarity shaped how English writers spoke of conscience, war, and responsibility—teaching the language restraint, seriousness, and the courage of principled dissent.
Death of Romain Rolland (1866–1944) – The Moral Conscience Heard Through English
Born December 29, 1809, William Ewart Gladstone shaped nineteenth-century English prose through moral argument and classical discipline. His speeches and essays demonstrated how complex sentences could carry ethical weight, intellectual rigor, and persuasive force, defining a serious register of English that influenced political, academic, and public discourse.
Birth of William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) – The Statesman Who Gave English Prose Its Victorian Gravity
excerpt Tunnel VisionI WAS UP BEFORE DAWN, excited, but my sense of adventure was shaded by vague misgivings. There had been something in Buster’s voice I couldn’t quite identify, something everyone else understood, and their knowing smiles had made me uncomfortable.I shrugged off the memory, slipped out of my pyjamas which I left in a […]
Small Change
Born in St. Petersburg in 1872, Teffi (Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya) went on to become a celebrated writer in early 20th-century Russia, publishing poems, short stories, satirical sketches and plays to great acclaim. In the autumn of 1918, with the Russian Civil War intensifying around her, Teffi was persuaded to leave Moscow for a short series of […]
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi (tr. R Chandler, E Chandler AM Jackson & I Steinberg)
On December 27, 1831, Darwin’s voyage aboard the HMS Beagle taught English to think in processes rather than declarations. Observation replaced authority, accumulation replaced assertion, and time itself entered prose. From this journey, English learned to argue patiently, describe gradual change, and treat uncertainty as intellectual strength.
Charles Darwin Departs on the HMS Beagle – The Journey That Remade English Nonfiction
Born December 26, 1891, Henry Miller shattered the boundaries of modern English prose. By challenging censorship, embracing radical autobiography, and reshaping sentence rhythm, he expanded what English could legally, morally, and stylistically express. His work transformed prose into a vehicle of personal freedom, intensity, and unapologetic subjectivity.
Birth of Henry Miller (1891–1980) – The Writer Who Forced English Prose to Break Its Restraints
Born December 21, 1917, Heinrich Böll shaped postwar English literary thought through translation. His restrained realism offered a language for guilt, conscience, and responsibility after catastrophe, rejecting heroics and abstraction. By accounting for damage rather than dramatizing it, Böll taught English prose how moral seriousness can emerge through clarity, silence, and ethical restraint.
Birth of Heinrich Böll (1917–1985) – The Conscience That Entered English Through Postwar Prose
Born December 19, 1910, Jean Genet reshaped modern drama and literary thought in English through translation and performance. His ritualistic, confrontational language challenged realism, power, and identity, forcing English theatre and criticism to confront marginality as aesthetic force and political stance rather than subject matter.
Birth of Jean Genet (1910–1986) – The Writer Who Forced English to Speak the Language of Transgression
Born December 18, 1870, Saki sharpened English prose into a calibrated weapon. Through precision, irony, and restraint, his stories expose cruelty beneath civility. A single sentence can overturn hierarchies, deny comfort, and end illusions. He proved that wit, perfectly timed, wounds deeper than noise. Calm language became lethal by design.
Birth of Saki (H. H. Munro) (1870–1916) – The Writer Who Perfected the Lethal Sentence in English
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