Hothouses: Poems, 1889

Maurice Maeterlinck. Princeton University Press, $41 (120pp) ISBN 978-0-691-08837-2

Long overdue for reconsideration is Hothouses: Poems 1889, the book of poems published in French by Belgian lawyer Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), who later went on the win a Nobel Prize. The facing-page translations by Richard Howard are the first complete set in more than 100 years, accompanied by seven Georges Minne woodcuts that show ""those faraway nights/ so long dead to memory that their/ gradually focused return/ withers the green soul of hopes to come.""

Featured Fiction Reviews

Canisia Lubrin

Windham Campbell Prize–winning poet Lubrin (Voodoo Hypothesis) makes her fiction debut with a thrilling and inventive collection centered on Black life in the Caribbean and the Continue reading »

Michel Nieva

Argentine writer Nieva sets his ingenious and outré English-language debut, expanded from an O. Henry Prize–winning short story, in a far-future world radically altered by Continue reading »

Jack Wang

In this exemplary historical, a Chinese Canadian man fights prejudice and falls in love during WWII. Josiah Chang, who’s unable to join the army because of his race, finds work Continue reading »

Gerald Murnane

This spectacular novel from Murnane (Inland), originally published in Australia in 2009, takes the form of an internal dialogue about the images, memories, and obsessions the Continue reading »