A prayer, a spiritual exercise, a meditation on the nature of time, with long, winding sentences that evoke the ploddingness of existence and the labyrinthine endlessness of the search for meaning and enlightenment. I loved the way this one made my brain feel—an alert sort of hypnosis, reminded me of some Calvino and Borges. Especially memorable was the section on how papyrus for sacred scrolls was made!
A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by László Krasznahorkai, (List Price: $15.95, New Directions, 9780811234474, November 2022)
Reviewed by Kristen Iskandrian, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama