—J. H. H. Weiler, New York University School of Law; Co-Editor-in-Chief, I·CON
Here is my pick of “Good Reads” from the books I read in 2022. I want to remind you, as I do every year, that these are not “book reviews,” which also explains the relative paucity of law books or books about the law. Many excellent ones have come my way in 2022, as in previous years, but an excellent law book is not always, in fact rarely is, a “good read” in the sense intended here: curl up on the sofa and enjoy a very good read, maybe even as a respite from an excellent law book. I should also point out that some of these “good reads” are not necessarily literary masterpieces—and yet, still, they are very good reads.
Moshe Halbetal and Stephen Holmes, The Beginning of Politics: Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel (Princeton University Press, 2017)
Inspired by this wonderful volume, which analyses the Book of Samuel, I recently gave a talk entitled “Politics, Power and Authority? Forget Machiavelli—It Is All in the Book of Samuel.” Alongside King David, Machiavelli’s Prince is a mere apprentice. Machiavelli taught “Never do an enemy a small injury.” David could have said (but was smart enough to keep this counsel to himself) “Never leave an enemy alive.” He was also smart enough to leave the killings to his lackeys and then wash his hands of it. (He did spare Saul’s life, caught with his pants, literally, down—a smart move by a smart political operator).
From Halbertal and Holmes’ book you will learn (a lot), become wiser (a lot) and derive pleasure (a lot). The book is not only a profound study of the building blocks of politics, but also a masterly exercise in literary analysis. And without compromising its scholarly depth, it reads so well.
In fact, this recommendation is a “two for the price of one”, for after reading The Beginning of Politics you will not need my exhortation to go and read the Book(s) of Samuel. And for those who have read it before, you will read it with new eyes.
“Samuel?,” you may be thinking, “is it not just one of those turgid biblical repetitive narrations of that inimitable skill of the Israelites to frustrate the Almighty, generation after generation?” Think again. As story and drama it has it all: the tale of the House of Saul and the House of David has not only palace intrigues, bloody wars both internal and external with exquisite drama (think of David and Goliath as mere appetizer), there is also fratricide, murder, rape, incest. If Netflix were to ask me which Old Testament Book would make for the best series, it would have to be Samuel. It would leave Game of Thrones and its prequel in the dust. (I am not sure how much of a recommendation this is!).
Jean-Philippe Toussaint, La Salle de bain (Les éditions du minuit, 1985), The Bathroom (transl. Nancy Amphoux and Paul De Angelis, Dalkey Archive Press, 2008); L’appareil photo (Les éditions du minuit, 1989), Camera (transl. Matthew B. Smith, Dalkey Archive Press, 2008)
If Halberal and Holmes made it to the top of the saggistica list, Toussaint makes it to the top of the Belles Lettres. Reading his first (1985) novel (La Salle de bain) and his second (1989) (L’appareil photo) I kept thinking with remorse—better late than never. For how could I have been oblivious to such genius for almost 40 years? And of course, since reading (and rereading) these two slim volumes I have been working my way through the remainder of his work. I consoled myself, in the self-deceiving manner of the aging and aged, that maybe it was an advantage to come to him later in life.
You can already sense that I am writing about Toussaint with the same enthusiasm I have towards, say, Sebald. And there are some parallels, parallels which go to style rather than content. There are very good novels. And then there are very good novels, which at the same time change the way we think about The Novel. A little bit like, say, those who pioneered a New School in painting. Toussaint belongs to this rare second category.
Prepare yourself for a little shock when beginning to read The Bathroom. But please, please do not be put off. It takes a little while to get the hang of it, but then it just sweeps you in. The books are short, but unlike say, Von Schirach about whom I write below, not to be read in one gulp. For fun I read the Italian, Spanish and English language editions (the choice of graphics for the covers amused me). The translations are, commendably, fine.
What are the books about? It is not the case here of not wanting to risk a spoiler. It is just so difficult actually to explain or even describe what they are “about.” You will understand when you read them. But here, too, do not be put off. Bear with it and you will be seduced. I will give you one teaser: L’appareil photo is possibly the most delicate love story I have ever read.
Tommaso Pavone, The Ghost Writers (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
My generation of European Law lawyers are hopelessly Court-centric. That’s what we know (or think we know). That is what interests us. European Law is about the Court of Justice of the European Union. Already years ago, Jo Shaw inveighed against this narrow view, which tends to leave out the main corpus of the law—legislation. She was right. You cannot write knowledgeably about the state of health of a country by simply visiting its hospitals. But there is another blind spot (more a black hole than a spot) in the Court-centric view of European law: the role of lawyers—in bringing cases, in arguing cases, in strategizing litigation, in virtually putting words in the mouth of the judges. Indeed, oftentimes the judgments we admire most are not the result of the genius of the judges but of the lawyers. I suppose the fundamental role of the Commission (and its Legal Service) have received attention, recognition (and critique), already going back to Eric Stein. But Pavone stretches his canvas far wider and he does so with verve and brilliance. The book has a thesis—almost conspiratorial in nature—which you might find at times overstated. I did, but this did not, and does not, detract from my high opinion of the book. For innovators, a modicum of exaggeration is a virtue, an indispensable virtue. Be that as it may, you are unlikely to think of Integration through Law in quite the same way as you did after reading this stimulating book. And by the nature of the enterprise, the book is attuned to the political and social context of European law, which has come to impact our lives in so many ways.
The underlying normativity of the book was not always clear to me, but that might be my own shortcoming and, in any event, even if I am right and it is not clear, here too, I regard this as a virtue. Last but not least, and this is what explains its appearance in this year’s list, it is a very good read.
Ferdinand von Schirach, The Collini Case (Penguin, 2013)
Von Schirach is a prominent German criminal law lawyer. He is also a best-selling author (translated into a million languages), several of whose books have been made into films. His life as a lawyer and some of the cases in which he acted provide the background (and at times much more) of his stories and novellas. For example, he recounts in Crime and Guilt (which I read years ago) his very first case—a harrowing tale of gang rape (the “gang” in question being a group of the most respectable citizens of a small town in Germany—in which he acted as defense attorney and in which he (and his fellow attorneys) got the culprits off the hook on a procedural technicality. It was, in his own words, the “loss of innocence” in his new profession. It will stick in your mind forever.
Although The Collini Case is one of his most famous, I got to it only this year. It is the epitome of a Good Read. Von Schirach is introspective and thoughtful, and getting the guilty acquitted is balanced by getting the wrongly accused acquitted. His conscience thus remains pure (I say this tongue in cheek). The stories and novellas are not truly profound, but are always thought-provoking. But what makes him such a good read and, justly, such a popular and best-selling author is his remarkable storytelling talent. You can intuit why he is such a successful lawyer, though the reverse relationship does not often work …
The Collini Case is a case in point. I want to avoid spoilers, but the manner in which he weaves his tale (based on a real-life prominent and notorious case) draws you ineluctably in. It is the kind of book, short, which you will read in one afternoon without putting it down. And even though the twist at the end is foreseeable early on, you will still not be able to put the book down. Von Schirach is, too, an acute social observer of contemporary Germany. Not great literature, a very good read.
Signe Rehling Larsen, The Constitutional Theory of the Federation and the European Union (Oxford University Press, 2021)
I am sure that the title alone will evoke a yawn or grimace of the “not again” genre. Can we not put behind us the EU identity navel-gazing? So I thought. Then I heard a talk by the author at the ICON-S Annual Meeting in Wroclaw this year and decided I must take a look at the book. If you are an EU scholar, I think you should too. It’s not some blinding insight that will strike you, nor will you agree with everything. Well, how could you? Three European scholars means four opinions on “what the EU is.” Instead, it is not only refreshing to revisit the old debates (speaking as one of the General Editors and authors of Integration through Law—Europe and the American Federal Experience of ‘80s vintage.) But Larsen is judicious and insightful in what she deals with, and manages to make the discourse relevant, very relevant to contemporary debates (and hand-wringing) about our beloved Union. And, crucially, it’s of very manageable proportions and a good read.
P.D. James, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Faber & Faber, 1972)
As a crime/detective writer, P.D. James is second to none. I think years back I must have read all her Adam Dalgliesh novels and watched the excellent BBC TV series—way before series became the preferred genre of the big studios. They are still available on YouTube. But somehow, I was oblivious to the Cordelia Gray novels. (And please don’t jump to facile conclusions.) An Unsuitable Job for a Woman is the first of these and having finally read it I discovered to my regret that she apparently only wrote one more. It is vintage P.D James—a compelling page turner. But Cordelia Gray is not simply a female Adam Dalgliesh. He, experienced, poetry lover, melancholic at times, and almost at the point of burnout. She, young (22 years-old), accidently takes a job with a failed (but very wise) private detective whose agency is at the point of bankruptcy and who commits suicide at the beginning of the tale (this is not a spoiler), leaving her to tackle on her own her first independent case. She did “read” (as they say in British university circles) English lit. at college, a fact that plays an important part in the story. Indeed, it is a very “Cambridge” tale. P.D. James not only tells a very good story, but is a keen observer of the human and social condition. It is a “one day, one gulp” book, but a satisfying read at that.
Bruno Schulz, Collected Stories (transl. Madeline G. Levine, Northwestern University Press, 2018)
If you read David Grossman’s first novel, See Under: Love, you will have come across Bruno Schulz in a fantasy chapter “dedicated” to him. The circumstances of his death are as harrowing as they are grotesque. When in Operation Barbarossa the Germans took over Drohobych (in the Lviv area) from the Soviets (who had occupied that part of Poland), a ghetto was established—a one-way road to the Belzec extermination camp. But Schulz, a resident of Drohobych, was a gifted painter as well as an extraordinary writer (he won the Polish Academy of Literature Golden Laurel award in 1938—at the very end of those 20 culturally golden years of post WWI Polish independence) and was offered protection—as his “personal Jew”—by one Landau, a German Gestapo officer, in exchange for painting for him. In 1942 Schulz was shot in the street by another German Gestapo officer, one Guenther, as an act of revenge. Apparently, Landau had murdered Guenther”s “personal Jew”, so here was payback. Schulz was 50 years-old at the time of his murder.
He was not prolific, and important parts of his writing did not survive. He is most famous for Sklepy Cynamonowe (1934), translated into English as The Street of Crocodiles. I read some Schulz when I was far too young, and it left no impression on me. But seeing that a new translation appeared (in 2018), I read it again this year. It is a masterpiece. It is a series of short stories relating to his local habitat. If you read it, you will understand why it so impressed the literary world then and now. It has one of the characteristics of a classic since it is at one and the same time minutely focused in space and time, and yet it is universal in space and is timeless. Even in translation (the Polish original defeated me, sigh), his descriptive powers as regards smell, colour and the normal objects and goings on of daily life, not to mention his acute observation of his human subjects, is close to mesmerizing. Schulz (like Olga Tokarczuk) also gives lie to the usual well-meaning (and foul-meaning) descriptions of relations between Jews and Poles. In Schulz there are no Polish Jews, but Jewish Poles, and their relationship to their fellow Catholic Poles covers the whole gamut of sociality, as one would expect if one could rid oneself of the habitual stereotypes.
Schulz had a dark view of life in general, so do not expect cathartic moments. But you will find big words, an additional gloss on the human condition—where the universal can only be grasped through the local. Great writer—good read.
Benito Pérez Galdós, Trafalgar (Edición de José Andrés Álvaro Ocáriz) (Desiréediciones, 2017)
If you think Trafalgar, or for that matter Waterloo, and if you have grown up in the English-speaking world, you might normally think of the genius and bravery of Nelson and the strategic brilliance (and luck) of Wellington. You (or at least I) do not give much thought to the vanquished.
Trafalgar, first of Benito Pérez Galdós’ (1843-1920) 19 Episodios Nacionales of Spanish history, is a classic correction to such. It is written in novelistic form, from the perspective of a young, inexperienced sailor (Gabriel), who joins the Spanish/French Armada on the eve of the famous battle. (In this he is reminiscent of the young Fabrice del Dongo, he of Stendhal’s La Chartreuse de Parme, who experiences Waterloo as a foot soldier and only catches a glimpse from the muddy field of Napoleon’s gown passing by on his horse.)
It is by no means a revisionist history, nor an apologetic account—though he does express his (historically justified) disgust at the French Admiral Villeneuve, who botched the battle for the Spanish-French alliance.
From a literary point of view, the book belongs to the 19th-century school of realism—and is really rather good as such—though by no means, in and of itself, is it a “great” novel. Its importance is that in the genre of fictionalized history, it is not a history of kings and heroes—an Upstairs tale—but gives the view from Downstairs. And that, of course, gives it a human touch, which is helped by a good dose of humour and irony and which never deteriorates to self-lacerating despair and cynicism, such as one finds in, say that other true masterpiece of the vanquished All Quiet on the Western Front. But it shares with Remarque a revulsion to war. I suppose we must be grateful to authors of the vanquished to debunk the glorification of armed conflict.
If you are interested in the historicity of the battle as well as the novelistic, I recommend the Critical Edition of 2017 by José Andrés Álvaro Ocáriz, himself a gifted poet and author.
Fernando Aramburu, Los peces de la amargura (Tusquets Editores, 2009)
This is a collection of short stories by Aramburu (he of Patria fame). I think this is a perfect introduction to this gifted author, though written after some of the novels that made his name. It has become somewhat à la mode in certain Spanish circles to critique Aramburu as “not really deep” and similar such characterizations. Pay no attention. Pure jealousy, which is the usual lot of serious authors whose work gains a popular appeal, is made into movies, and the like.
I had not before this year read any short stories by him—I am not even sure if he has other short story collections. The transition from novel to short story is neither obvious nor always successful, as is the case with the transition from short story to novel. (Think Maupassant, with the possible exception of Bel Ami, or Cheever—masters of the short story, mediocre novelists). Aramburu is as good a short story author as he is a novelist. The collection ends with a story in the form of a play, Después de las Llamas. It is a jewel. And I can say with some confidence that no matter your taste in Belles Lettres you will find this collection a very good read.
Alda Merini, Vuoto d’amore (Einaudi, 1991)
This anthology of Merini’s poetry was a present, which collected dust on my shelves since 2018, and finally it (and I) found redemption. Another “better late than never”—with a vengeance.
The poetry is essential, exquisite and at times shattering. Merini had a difficult life, including a period of psychiatric hospitalization, reflected in her 1984 collection La Terra Santa—personal and intense, some of which is included in this volume. But let that not deter you. The pain is never lachrymose, the suffering never self-pitying. And in quite a few of the poems, love letters in the form of poems, there is a subtle and delicate humorous irony, including self-irony. It is, too, the poetry of a ferociously strong woman.
This is the poem that opens this anthology:
Lo sguardo del poeta
Se qualcuno cercasse de capire il tuo sguardo
Poeta difenditi con ferocia
il tuo sguardo son cento sguardi che ahimè ti hanno
guardato tremando
A short “theological” epilogue
Among my friends, my passion for literature is well known. “How do you find the time? What is your secret?”, I am so often asked. And yes, I believe that I am as busy an academic as the next one. We all know that the moment we are appointed to an academic position, we can wave goodbye to La Vita Contemplativa. It is a life of juggling teaching with research and writing and with the endless other commitments of academic citizenship. There is always a deadline looming, a paper for which you begged “…one more weekend please, Monday morning, no fail”.
It is a form of slavery to our work (the charitable view) or (the less charitable view) to our ambition.
What, then, is “my secret”?
In Mark 2:27 Jesus famously said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” ”Yes, but,” replies this Pharisaic Jew… (you expected this “Yes, but”). My view, for what it is worth, is that only if one accepts in the deepest sense that man was made, so to speak, for the Sabbath, will the Sabbath end up being made for man.
During the 25 hours of the Sabbath, there are no emails or WhatsApps, no computer or TV, no work-related activities (that Monday deadline notwithstanding), no shopping, no use of vehicles. It is a time out of time. And ritual commitments fulfilled, one can turn to other spiritual activities of which reading Belles Lettres surely is. Add to the Sabbaths the various Holy days (not holidays, I fear) and one ends up with quite a lot of time for non-work-related reading each year.
Two caveats are in order: first, if this reads like some form of Jewish evangelizing—“become a Jew and observe the Sabbath”—perish the thought. I would not wish such even on my enemies (well, maybe on one or two I would). But assigning to yourself a day a week that takes you out of the normal rhythms of daily life, of work and ambition may be worth a thought.
Second, Judaism, alongside the other monotheistic religions, is notorious for some aspects of its attitude towards women, Sabbath observance being one such case. Partly in law, partly in custom, household chores and childcare are left to women, and thus the guys can have a rewarding spiritual time. There are, of course, egalitarian ways of sharing the burden and for some time now there have been vibrant forms of egalitarian Judaism trying to address among many other issues that too.
Previous good reads
(2014)
Moshe Halbertal, Maimonides: Life and Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Robert Howse, Leo Strauss, Man of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse, Microcosm. A Portrait of a Central European City (London: Pimlico, new edition, 2003); Gregor Thum, Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wroclaw during the Century of Expulsions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); Klemen Jaklic, Constitutional Pluralism in the EU (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Nick Barber, The Constitutional State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Wistawa Szymborska, Here (Boston: Mariner Books, 2012); Wistawa Szymborska, Poems New and Collected (Boston: Mariner Books, 2000 (or any other collection of her poems)); Michael S. Pardo and Dennis Patterson, Mind, Brains, and Law: The Conceptual Foundations of Law and Neuroscience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Maria Aristodemou, Law & Literature: Journeys from Her to Eternity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Thomas D. Seeley, Honeybee Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Jürgen Tautz, The Buzz about the Bees: Biology of a Superorganism (Heidelberg et al.: Springer Verlag, 2008).
(2015)
Michaela Hailbronner, Traditions and Transformations: The Rise of German Constitutionalism (Oxford University Press, 2015); Vittoria Barsotti, Paolo Carozza, Marta Cartabia and Andrea Simoncini, Italian Constitutional Justice in Global Context (Oxford University Press, 2015); Sabino Cassese, Dentro La Corte. Diario di un Giudice Costituzionale (Il Mulino, 2015); Moshe Hirsch, Invitation to the Sociology of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2015); Jürgen Kurtz, The WTO and International Investment Law: Converging Systems (Cambridge University Press, 2016); Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen, An Ever More Powerful Court? The Political Constraints of Legal Integration in the European Union (Oxford University Press, 2015); W.G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction (Modern Library, 1999); Pio Baroja, El Arbol de la Ciencia (first published 1911); Patti Smith, M Train (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015); Miguel de Unamuno, San Manuel Bueno, mártir (first published 1930).
(2016)
Philippe Sands, East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (Knopf, 2016); Mario Vargas Llosa, Travesuras de la niña mala (Alfaguara, 2006); Patrick Pasture, Imagining European Unity Since 1000 AD (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Ricardo de Ángel Yágüez, ¿Es Bello el Derecho? (Civitas, 2016); Olivier Dupéré, Constitution et droit international (Institut Universitaire Varenne, 2016); David Bellos, Georges Perec: A Life in Words: A Biography (D.R. Godine, 1993); Monica Garcia-Salmones Rovira, The Project of Positivism in International Law (Oxford University Press, 2014); Julio Ramón Ribeyro, La palabra del mudo (Seix Barral, 2010); Marise Cremona, David Kleimann, Joris Larik, Rena Lee and Pascal Vennesson, ASEAN’s External Agreements: Law, Practice and the Quest for Collective Action (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Mary Oliver, Felicity: Poems (Penguin Press, 2015).
(2017)
Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 4 Volumes (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982–2012); Ludovic Hennebel and Hélène Tigroudja, Traité de droit international des Droits de l’homme (Editions Pedone, 2016); Lauri Mälksoo, Russian Approaches to International Law (Oxford University Press, 2015); Aldo Schiavone, Ponzio Pilato: Un enigma tra storia e memoria (Einaudi, 2016); Pontius Pilate: Deciphering a Memory (transl. Jeremy Carden, Liveright, 2017); Eduardo García de Enterría, Fervor de Borges (Editorial Trotta, 1999); Guy Fiti Sinclair, To Reform the World—International Organizations and the Making of Modern States (Oxford University Press, 2017); Matthew Saul, Andreas Follesdal and Geir Ulfstein (eds), The International Human Rights Judiciary and National Parliaments (Cambridge University Press, 2017); Bernard E. Harcourt, Exposed—Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age (Harvard University Press, 2015); María Elvira Roca Barea, Imperiofobia y Leyenda Negra—Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos y el Imperio español (Siruela, 2016); Claudio Rodríguez, Alianza y Condena (Ediciones de la Revista de Occidente, 1965); Alliance and Condemnation (transl. Philip W. Silver, Swan Isle Press, 2014).
(2018)
Marcel Reich-Ranicki, The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Princeton University Press, 2001); Louis Dumont, German Ideology: Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective (University of Chicago Press, 1986); Louis Dumont, German Ideology: From France to Germany and Back (University of Chicago Press, 1994); Yishai Beer, Military Professionalism and Humanitarian Law: The Struggle to Reduce the Hazards of War (Oxford University Press, 2018); Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate, 2009); Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate, 2012); Dennis Marks, Wandering Jew: The Search for Joseph Roth (Notting Hill Editions, 2016); E. B. White, Here Is New York (The Little Bookroom, 1999; Harper, 1949 (1st ed.)); Charles Leben (ed.), Droit international des investissements et de l’arbitrage transnational (Editions A. Pedone, 2015); Benjamin D. Sommer, Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (Yale University Press, 2015); Miguel Beltrán de Felipe and Daniel Sarmiento Ramírez-Esudero, Un Tribunal para la Constitución (Registradores de España, 2017); It Stays With You (Documentary film, produced and directed by Cahal McLaughlin and Siobhan Mills, 2017, available at https://vimeo. com/222497700).
(2019)
Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora—A History of Anti-Semitism in England (Oxford University Press, 2010); Julio Baquero Cruz, What’s Left of the Law of Integration? Decay and Resistance in European Union Law (Oxford University Press, 2018); Julio Baquero Cruz, El árbol Azul (Cuadernos de Langre, 2018); Francisco J. Urbina, A Critique of Proportionality and Balancing (Cambridge University Press, 2017); Ilenia Ruggiu, Culture and the Judiciary: The Anthropologist Judge (Routledge, 2018); Karen J. Alter and Laurence R. Helfer, Transplanting International Courts—The Law and Politics of the Andean Tribunal of Justice (Oxford University Press, 2017); Javier Marias, Corazon Tan Blanco (A Heart So White) (Editorial Anagrama, 1992; transl. Margaret Jull Costa, Harvill Press, 1995); Magda Szabó, The Door (transl. Len Rix, Harvill Press, 2005); Richard Ford, The Sportswriter (followed by Independence Day, The Lay of the Land, Let Me Be Frank with You) (Vintage, 1995); Kalypso Nicolaidis, Exodus, Reckoning, Sacrifice: Three Meanings of Brexit (Unbound, 2019); Hanoch Levin, The Labor of Life: Selected Plays (Stanford University Press, 2003).
(2020)
Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob (Księgi Jakubowe albo Wielka podróż przez siedem granic, pięć języków i trzy duże religie, nie licząc tych małych) [The Books of Jacob, or a Great Journey Through Seven Borders, Five Languages and Three Major Religions, Not Counting the Small Ones] (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2014); Harry Mulisch, The Discovery of Heaven (transl. Paul Vincent, Penguin, 1997); Olivier Corten, Le discours du droit international—Pour un positivisme critique (Pedone, 2009); Janusz Korczak, Bankructwo Małego Dżeka (Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza RSW “Prasa- Książka-Ruch”, 1979); Lars Vinx, The Guardian of the Constitution: Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt on the Limits of Constitutional Law (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Witold Gombrowicz, Bacacay (transl. Bill Johnston, Archipelago, 2006); William Phelan, Great Judgments of the European Court of Justice: Rethinking the Landmark Decisions of the Foundational Period (Cambridge University Press, 2019); Robert Massie, Dreadnought—Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War (Ballantine Books, 1992); Andoni Luis Aduriz y Daniel Innertarity, Cocinar, Comer, Convivir—Recetas para pensar con los cinco sentidos (Ediciones Destino, 2012); Josef Hen, Nowolipie Street (transl. Krystyna Boron, Dl Books Llc, 2012).
(2021)
Robert Seethaler, The Tobacconist (Transl. Charlotte Collins. Picador, 2017) (Der Trafikant(Kein & Aber, 2012)); Irwin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept (Basic Books, 1992); Hans Küng, Freud and the Problem of God (Transl. Edward Quinn. Yale University Press, 1990); Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses (Yale University Press, 1993); Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, second revision, 2006); Andrew Clapham, War (Oxford University Press, 2021); Charlotte Allen, The Human Christ—The Search for the Historical Jesus (The Free Press, 1998); Alicja Sikora, Constitutionalisation of Environmental Protection in EU Law (Europa Law Publishing, 2020); Doreen Lustig, Veiled Power, International Law and the Private Corporation 1886-1981 (Oxford University Press, 2020); Adam Zagajewski, Mysticism for Beginners (Poems) (Transl. Clare Cavanagh. Farrar Straus & Girou, 1997). Honourable Mentions: Wolfgang Borchert, The Man Outside (A Play) (New Directions, revised edition 1982); Joachim Fest, Not I—Memoirs of a German Childhood (Transl. Martin Chalmers, Other Press, 2012).
JHHW
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