Name: Poblamiento del Continente Americano
ISBN: 978-9929-687-90-5

Cinema · Books · Moscow · Humour

The famous restaurant guide of Duchemin, France's most authoritative restaurant critic, in the hilarious comedy "The Wing or the Thigh" with Louis de Funès, somehow ended up in Moscow in the same display case as Stepan Veselovsky's…

The famous restaurant guide of Duchemin, France's most authoritative restaurant critic, in the hilarious comedy "The Wing or the Thigh" with Louis de Funès, somehow ended up in Moscow in the same display case as Stepan Veselovsky's reference work on persons who served under

Books · People · Humour

Dovlatov has a recollection of the remarkable Soviet translator Rita Rait-Kovaleva, who was the first to translate into Russian many classics of American, German and other literatures

I was once Vera Panova's secretary. One day Vera Fyodorovna asked: "Whose Russian, in your opinion, is the best?" I suppose I ought to have answered: yours. But I said: "Rita Kovaleva's." "Which Kovaleva?" "Rait." "The Faulkner

Still from an HBO series: two women in a dark theatre audience, the subtitle asking whether the play is about them.

Books · Monarchies · Saint Petersburg · Humour

Leaving his box, the emperor said the play had hit everyone, and him most of all

Nicholas I, with the heir, at the premiere of The Government Inspector on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre on 19 April 1836, felt roughly like this. Leaving the box, the Emperor exclaimed: "What a play! Everyone got it, and I most of all!"

Archive · Faith · Books · Monarchies

Monks who had access to monastic libraries, like the scribes engaged in copying and compiling manuscripts, sometimes left in the margins of the books they read notes or even entries recording the provenance of the volumes, or idle thoughts…

On the last leaf of a Lenten Triodion of 1462 there is a curious epitaph for the late Grand Duke of Moscow, Vasily II the Blind: "In the year 6970 [1462] on the 28th day of the month of March, on the feast of our holy and venerable father

NB! · Books · Observations · Pop Culture

I have never worn a stitch of Thom Browne, but the collection inspired by the novel "Moby-Dick; or, The Whale" went straight to my heart 💎

Books · Observations · Society Pages · Humour

Lisbon body scrub and Remarque’s novel “The Night in Lisbon”

At a cosmetics presentation, the brand's founder talks about body scrubs (those abrasive powders rubbed into the skin to remove dead layers), named after various cities: Istanbul, Tokyo, Lisbon. The business lady says that her body-care line Lisbon was inspired by her beloved Remarque and his novel

Architecture · Books · Heritage

Duke Wilhelm of Urach built Lichtenstein Castle inspired by Hauff's novel

Lichtenstein Castle in winter is a chivalric ballad made real. This is precisely what literature looks like when it has been frozen in stone. Duke Wilhelm of Urach, owner of the lands in the municipality of Lichtenstein in Baden-Württemberg, was so impressed by Wilhelm Hauff's historical novel

NB! · Books · Science · Humour

A reminder that the word "nightmare" has a French cousin, and that cauchemar came into French from Latin

Books · Society · People

"How could the younger generation have lacked the clear-sightedness, the tact, the heart to grasp all the grandeur, all the power of these brilliant young men, emerging from the ranks of the Guards, these darlings of rank and wealth, leaving their drawing

To be angry that these people appeared in the one estate that had any education, any leisure and any security is senseless. Had these "princes, boyars, voivodes", these statssekretari and colonels not been the first to awake from moral hunger, and had they waited for physical hunger to

NB! · Books · People · Humour

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya: Our Answer to Buddy Winkle

Faith · Books

Leo Tolstoy in “The Power of Darkness” on city lavatories and a forgotten God

"Well, I daresay the time's at hand, eh. Saw the privies, too, eh, in the town. When we got there, that is. All smoothed, smoothed out, eh, smart as can be. Made like a tavern. And for no purpose. All for no purpose. Oh, we've

Archive · Books · Monarchies · Mores

Mirror divination on the day of the Tilsit meeting of Alexander I and Napoleon

Pogodin has a tale, told by Countess A.D.B., of a strange divination that took place in a landowner's house, in the company of friends E.O. The young ladies fell to talking of divination by mirror, and the daughter of the house agreed to try it