Uran Mujku Mujku itibaren حلوبي كبير، Syria
This is a wonderful fictional depiction of the real life Baroness Elsa Von Freytag Loringhoven. Queen of dadaism, Elsa makes her entire life a walking, breathing piece of art. I particularly enjoyed her escapades with Marcel Duchamp. This would make a fantastic movie, with perhaps Bjork as the lead?
I'd give it more stars if I could! This is a book of essays written about the authors experience in the Vietnam war. I could hardly put the book down and now I'm a little disappointed to have it end so quickly. It is difficult to read, but gives the reader a real window into the life of a soldier. As horrifying as it was, as war is, my favorite passage was within the essay "How To Tell A True War Story". O'Brien writes about the "beauty" of war. I'm going to include it here because I read it over and over. It really had an impact on me. I remember my dad who is a Vietnam vet talking about how beautiful the country was. He has always wanted to travel back to Vietnam to be able to enjoy it. But I remember thinking how incredible it was that he was in the middle of this horrible violent war, death all around him, and he was able to see this foreign country as beautiful. [image error] O'Brien writes, "At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not."
Beautiful book. Interesting look at popular art and its portrayal of history in Zaire.