European Review of Books #6
200 x 270, 160 pages
Maastricht, Netherlands (English-language)
First launched 2022
Triannual
Founding editors: George Blaustein, Sander Pleij and Wiegertje Postma
Design: Patrick Doan
'Books? Review? Europe? A European Review of Books would sound thrice-doomed. And yet here we are.'
Here they are indeed. The ERB is made up of the things you'd expect: fiction, essays, poetry, art, and reviews. It contains stuff about Europe and stuff from Europe. Long-form and short-form.
But there are also things inside you might not expect to find: pops of colours, 'pearls' of wisdom, multilingual articles, and pages joined together by perforated edges which need to be (gently) torn open with fingers, giving an altogether new reading experience and allowing you to keep track of your progress through the publication.
The sixth edition is lovely lavender-hued and features: short fiction about word-based destruction by Adania Shibli, Théo Casciani with a story about the terminally online, Marisa Libbon interprets Jane Austen through her wardrobe, Alex John Beck asks why bother with photography? and much more.
On the Journal: At Work With Sander Pleij
Before ERB, Sander worked at two Dutch weeklies: De Groene Amsterdammer and Vrij Nederland, and wrote, ‘Explicador’, a novel that ‘desperately needs to be translated into English’. He is currently writing a novelistic anti-biography of Rem Koolhaas. We meet him as issue one The European Review of Books hits shops... READ MORE