Irina Dumitrescu

I have forgotten how to read. It isn’t the first time. I have forgotten before and I will forget again. In other words, I am still learning how to read.

Review of THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPWRECKED BOOKS: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World’s Greatest Library, By Edward Wilson-Lee

A review essay of five dance books

Review of Tristan Major's Undoing Babel: The Tower of Babel in Anglo-Saxon literature

BONN, Germany — The cult German police television drama “Tatort” usually features murders committed by organ smugglers, baby thieves and international spies. But on one Sunday this May, the suspects were a widely appreciated group: traditional, back-to-the-land organic farmers.

A shortlist review of three book memoirs

“LITERATURE,” WRITES AZAREEN Van der Vliet Oloomi, “is a nation without boundaries. It is infinite. There are no stations, no castes, no checkpoints.” This is the promise at the heart of her new novel Call Me Zebra, that the exile who lives through books can acquire a more liberated identity than the one fate has in store. It explores the seductive qualities of this idea but also its ultimate brittleness: it is one thing to be nourished by the words of dead writers, quite another to f...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person who has never raised a picky eater knows exactly how to make other people’s children eat. Theirs is a special kind of wisdom, firm in its untested conviction, unsullied by something so banal as experience. Parents today are too accommodating, they will tell you, spoiling children by becoming their short-order cooks. Kids have too much access to junk food, anyway; give them a diet of roasted spelt and kombucha for a few weeks, and they will ...

Around the year 1116, Fulbert, the canon of Notre-Dame Cathedral, sought a live-in tutor for his gifted niece. The young woman was already well-known for her learning, so Fulbert chose an ostentatiously brilliant philosopher for the job. The man he hired had already challenged some of the best minds of his time, and was currently employed as master of the schools at Notre-Dame. He was a leading light of the Parisian intelligentsia. Given complete authority to teach and punish Héloïse, Abelard...

Irina Dumitrescu on the enchantment of books, early reading experiences, and the stories that shape us

Originally published by Petits Propos Culinaires (2013)
Picture a sausage, kept warm in a flat pan of water or oil, its uncased surface shriveled, drenched in ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder. A heap of French fries, blanketed with mayonnaise and ketchup, serves as accompaniment, or else a comparatively ascetic five-cent bread roll, generally stale. Any sane non-German, with properly calibrated taste buds and a sense of the limits to which innovation in food should be taken, will recoi...

The art of stuffing yourself while chancellor.

Why Libraries' Survival Matters - Up For Discussion...

What does it mean to engage in a practice aimed at perfection, when perfection is impossible?

Quench Your Curiosity with Zócalo's Summer Book Lis...