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BOOKS I READ: We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think (2016) by Shirley Hazzard. A collection of Shirley Hazzard’s non-fiction in five sections, edited by Brigitta Olubas. Section two, The Expressive Word, book reviews and their writers, including Muriel Spark, Patrick White, and Iris Origo’s Leopardi, is exquisite. In the section on Public Themes, her contemporaneous putdowns of the United Nations and Kurt Waldheim, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, are damming indictments of ineffectiveness and cronyism.
The title essay is made for multiple readings, finding new nuggets at every pass, but sublime was “Canton More Far,” her weekend spy mission to Canton at age sixteen from her home in Hong Kong. (Jan 2021)
NB: trying out Medium’s shortform posts to chain my recent reads. Follow the chain; go to previous book:
