J. R. Ramakrishnan

Nov 13, 2024 | southwestreview.com | J. R. Ramakrishnan |Robert Rea

By J. R. Ramakrishnan On the New Orleans neutral ground where Conti crosses Basin Street stands a statue of the Mexican president Benito Juárez. The bronze monument, a gift of the Mexican government, bears the inscription “Peace is based on the respect of the right of others” (“El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz”), from Juárez’s manifesto declared upon defeating the Second Mexican Empire in 1867.

Oct 19, 2023 | wordswithoutborders.org | J. R. Ramakrishnan |Ruth Kemp |Kelly Zhang |Hongyu Zhu

In Maru Ayase’s The Forest Brims Over, Rui, a woman who is muse for her writer husband’s literary efforts, has enough of being exploited for inspiration, swallows a bowl of seeds, and sprouts into a tree. Instead of seeking intervention, her husband, Tetsuya, places her in an aquaterrarium and begins drafting his next novel based on her transformation. But Rui grows and grows into an overwhelming forest, forcing Tetsuya to confront the realities of his life and literary work.

May 23, 2023 | wordswithoutborders.org | Jack Rockwell |Chiara Marchelli |J. R. Ramakrishnan

In his 2013 review of the second volume of Knausgård’s My Struggle, Leland de la Durantaye asked: “Why would you read a six-volume, 3,600-page Norwegian novel about a man writing a six-volume, 3,600-page Norwegian novel?” While Otohiko Kaga’s Marshland isn’t quite so long—a mere 1,035 pages, in one volume instead of six—a similar question is operative here, or indeed any time a novel comes out that’s much longer than most of the rest that we read. Why is the long form required?