The European Review of Books #12

The European Review of Books is a magazine of culture and ideas, in English and in a writer’s own tongue. They publish book-length print issues three times a year, and digital pieces each week.

No review of books reviews only books, nor does it merely review. They publish many kinds of writing: fiction, travelogue, provocation, parody, poem, come what may. In general they champion the essayistic mode.

A good essay is the antidote to the measly opinion, the enemy of the airy platitude. They want avenues to the arcane, the profane, the grand.

Issue #12

A pale, dusty peach – warmer than pink, softer than orange, like the last stretch of summer light. Meet Issue Twelve, out in September 2026. In this issue: the self-flagellation that is writing a human text, a visit to an Irish subsea cable landing station, winter as a disappearing cultural construct, and fascism’s libidinal thrill. Sex workers as markers of national character, and the translators of the Yugoslavia Tribunal as an invisible force. Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski saw it all coming, war photographer Lee Miller gets close to the edge. The ethics of paying attention, and the philosophy of designing books. Plus, a newly translated story by Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) on a deadly family, and a quartet of essays touching on the question: how dead is international law?