European Review of Books #8
200 x 270, 162 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 about Europe and from Europe. 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 to continue reading and keep track of your progress through the publication.
Inside this strawberry-red eighth issue: ‘Schengen’s pseudo-borderless « Europe ». A day in Minsk and an eternity at the border. A trip through Syria’s now-uninhabited terror apparatus (archivists needed). Cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, agricultural-novelists in Switzerland and France, tree-huggers in The Hague’ and 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