/int/ - certified time wasters

>>16959
>Why are France's biggest cultural export creepy old perverts?
Because warmongering isn't fun anymore since they are buddy-buddy with Germany.

>>16845
This

>>16878
Lol
[spoiler alert]
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/may/07/fiction.familyandrelationships
https://www.france24.com/en/20080430-houellebecqs-mother-strikes-back-literature-france
https://www.malaymail.com/news/read/2017/01/18/my-mother-didnt-love-me-enough-says-french-writer-houellebecq/1295091
[/spoiler alert]
Reminds me of Galkovsky's insane sister who inherited his literally talent and whose compiled letters he published.

>>16971
Kek I feel somewhat bad because this profound human drama between a mother and her son amuses me

Who knew that a soc-dem yapping 200 years ago was as annoying as a soc-dem yapping today.

The book is a gigantic well meaning slop. The autor takes the liberty to interrupt his book every once in while to give his direct opinion on different history and societal topics. It's in a grey place inbetween academic grand writting and bourgeois progressive populism. It's godly annoying, not really boring, I wasn't bored, but it pissed me off. Oh and the romantism was no better, the most depressing idealism, indicator of a century dictated by a frustrated bunch.

I read a version annoted by some Yves Gohin, who apparently was given absolute freedom on annoting whatever he felt like in the way he saw fit. So that only half of the latin text is translated, he gives his two cents about the most random topics and is generally not very useful.

>>17049
Would you be ok with it ending in socialist revolution and the prole murdering the bourgeois instead marrying him?

>>17052
t. pissed soc-dem yapper.

>>17052
My grudge is mostly stylistic. It seems like it tries really hard to be paternalistically demagogic to the prole. The whole story, which is more of a fable than a novel is hidden behind a mist of classic scholar though I don't reject the thesis that it became scholarly as consequence to its notoriety and wasn't before, idealist and christian metaphors and stylistic devices which end up making everything unsubtle. I don't subscribe to his sublime.

>>17054
The critique is not unique. We have old Hugo sitting in his study in imperial France, painting a monumental panorama of early nineteenth century French society and smugly pushing on us his views on everything he shows us, in extensive detail, repeatedly. To make his points, he moves his cast of exemplary figures around, mixes them up, separates them and rejoins them. If you do not suffer from slave morality, you will hate this book.

It is a piece of devotional literature for smugarrogant, but weak and powerless dirty ugly leftshit do-gooders, and it has very little literary value.

>>17062
>he moves his cast of exemplary figures around, mixes them up, separates them and rejoins them.

A lot of empty words for a somebody who thinks of himself as a hands on man.

t. never read Hugo

>>17063
Completely agreed, I've never read it. I'm not interested in the philosophical musings on poverty of the French bourgeoisie. Victor Hugo's views are further complicated by the privileged role of Paris' inhabitants in a global context.
also im ignorant

It is highly problematic to lament the poverty of white French people in metropolitan France while France was enslaving and exploiting Africans in colonies. Reading and discussing white French literature is racist and you are racists.

>>17062
Hugo only lived to see the invasion of Algeria and not the rest of the rise of the French African colonial empire, though he may have welcomed it for the civilizating effect of French culture if it was to
happen in his lifetime. He also argued against slavery and tried to obtain the presidential pardon of John Brown in America.

>>17072
Meant to answer >>17068

>>17072
Let's not forget slavery in The French West Indies.

>>17065
Take your meds. maybe then your speech will become comprehensible again.

>>17049
Reminds me of Tolstoy lecturing readers on historical processes in "War and peace".

>>17076
If I had to re-read W&P I’d probably skip all of Pierre’s diaries and the ending essay.

>>17074
>slavery in West Indies
Sadly I don’t know when did it stop.

A fun story is when Hugo was confronted to the Paris commune and tried to play both side as he was exiled by the current government and that most communards tried their best to convince this cranky old man to be an allied. The leaders of the insurrection were forced to keep a respect mixed with prudent hatred. Which the author detected and took personally saying the commune was a great movement mediocre leaders.

>>17083
Stopped with the Revolution, only to be reintroduced by Napoleon.

>>17084
Guess that is before his time. Shame on me, I suppose. But as an ideologue, I'd just pivot into the Haitian debt as new form of economic slavery.

>>17072
The French captured Algiers in 1830, Vietnam became a colony in 1862, Frenzy presence in West Africa and French Guyana dates back to the 17th century. Why are you making excuses du dreckige fascho sau?

>>17092
There is a colonialist reactionary, a Christian soc-dem and a communist within myself. I have no clear ontological or epistemological base. I really have to fix myself somewhere. But I am most sincere when I say Monsieur Hugo is insufferable

>>17095
>I have no clear ontological or epistemological base

That is humanities academia in a nutshell. Methodological pluralism. Filthy post-modernist. Unconscious academic kool-aid gulping! Wake Up!

I have been rereading Hugo von Hofmannsthal's one act play "Elektra", a work of immense political beauty. I highly recommend it, if you're tired of reading Sophokles's version.

>>17363
Sorry, I meant to say poetical of course.

Read different articles and interviews by Alexadnr Solzhenitsyn.
About Russia after 1991, about relationships with Ukraine - in hindsight boring and obvious things, but at the time of publishing they didn't feel so.
About communism - he's traumatized by being victim of stalinism, which made him uncompromising and dogmatic. There is nothing inherently bad about Marxism, it's a good state ideology if used as ideology and not literal instructions - Dengist China is example of that. There can be communist fanatics, Christian fanatics, Muslim fanatics, and all of them are capable of creating giant atrocities. But things committed by ISIS are not applied to all Muslims. Same way, Solzhenitsyn is devoted Christian and apologizes religious massacres and witch hunts as "particular cases that do not discredit the faith", which is easy for him to say since he's not a victim of (Christian) witch hunts.
About West - often makes you want to say "OK, boomer" =D . Well, grandpa spent most of his life behind the Iron Curtain in socialist society, so that's understandable. As an exile, that is involuntary migrant, he struggles with understanding society which is new for him.
What surprised me is how patriotic and independently-minded Solzhenitsyn is compared to modern opposition. Probably he could afford it because he was an exceptional person. If Volkov says something disliked by his Americans, they'll drop him and find another Volkov at the closest scrapyard. But finding another Solzhenitsyn, just as much brave and talented, was problematic.


The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
It was introduced to me as female version of "The Catcher in the Rye". Well, there are some similarities. Same epoch, same country. Just as well about young person overwhelmed and confused by outside world.
But here the heroine goes insane because of that and goes through severe mental illness and 50-s psychiatry system. So instead of a coherent monologue, we have scattered, unorganized memories. And instead of bittersweet vibes we have a gloomy, oppressive atmosphere.
Pretty good.

The transhumanism trilogy, by Victor Pelevin
One time reading slop, but a nice one. With exception of the story about cats, which is genius. Describes realistic (from 2020-s perspective) future where majority of people use neuroimplants which send to them subliminal advertisement and political agitation. The thing about rich people migrating to virtual realities (of different price tiers) by becoming brains in jars is not realistic, but interesting, because it gives infinite space for fiction.

Fuck me, by Virginie Despentes
At beginning description of French lowlifes' daily life. Then pulp fiction about two girls going postal, drinking and fucking.
Good lightweight reading.
Haven watched the movie adaptation yet.

King Kong Theory, by Virginie Despentes
Collections of essays, all dedicated to feminism. A lot of egocentrism, naivety and self-contradictions but interesting in the parts where she talks about her experience.

Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov
Basically, Borat for intellectuals :D
Tells a story about post-revolution immigrant, teaching Russian language to students of shit-tier American college. He's a cuck, naive fool and he's terrible in his job, but he's still very kind and lovely person. So this is a humorous description of Russian diaspora and American academia.
Takes place in 50-s yet characters described are surprisingly prevalent today.

How to watch cinema, by Anton Dolin
Author is a pompous idiot (and the most popular movie critic in Russia), but he likes cinema and knows a lot about it, therefore it was somewhat informative if taken with a grain of salt. Also contains entry-level watchlists on different types of movies.

>>18275
I’ll borrow your posting style

How I became Japanese, by Florent Dabadie
Offered by my great-aunt. I expected nothing and got a mastered, simple style autobiography about a Hungaryball style French far-east enthusiast who learned Japanese through academia and went on to become a news reporter of one of the biggest sport channel in Japan. Great life, insightful about Japan and with a cultural perspective I can relate to, he manages to stay humble and make his life story talk more about Japan and his relation to it than about himself.

Been meaning to write this shit for a while actually I just keep forgetting about it.

Okay so this lovely book is an 1908 sci-fi novel set in 1999. So it's another one of those very late "Long 19th century" early sci-fi novels that take place in the past by comparison. (Though the only other one that comes to mind right now is Mór Jókai's Novel of the Coming Century which actually deals with sort of similar topics.)
So anyway the whole thing is stuck in this "where will have China been gone going?" thing in the reader's mind where you compare the China of today to this imagined China.

To contextualize it a bit: This is an "obscure" novel in China. It's not part of any curriculum, they had modern editions published but it's no cornerstone of Chinese literary culture or development. This is literally the only edition available in a "Western" language and even this is only due to ethnonarcissism because it mentions Hungary a lot.

So it's 1999. China is still a monarchy but it has a parliament, local governance and a lot of non governmental organisations working for the benefit of the nation. By all accounts, China in 1999 in the novel is a superpower with its national production worth trillions of taels of silver and a strong modern army. Electric trains, science institutions, meritocracy etc.
The treaty ports have long been returned and the "White nations" have recalled their ambassadors from China.

We arrive at the first important bit that I think is worth examining, which is that the author essentially writes a novel about a world war along racial lines.
Which in our current time as a western reader probably be the novel's most captivating and amusing part, especially after close to a decade of anti-China scaremongering. But while a traditional Chinese version of the Turner Diaries sounds slightly amusing this is probably the worst angle this novel could be read from, simply because this entire paradigm in it is nothing more than just the novel being a product of its time.

Yes it at times reads like as if Maoism and Turanism had a weird baby where the Turks and the Egyptians fight alongside the pan-Asian forces and SEA local rebels against the Western powers, but this is just your hindsight contextualising things.

The plot essentially goes that China introduces a new calendar based on the birth of the Yellow Emperor and all the Asian nations quickly adopt it. The West dislikes the new calendar and recalls their ambassadors from China again. The conflict gets heated when the king of Hungary decides to also adopt the Chinese calendar, causing riots in the streets from the white minority living in the country and the Western powers to threaten Hungary with war.
The Chinese emperor decides to intervene to protect the fraternal Asiatic nation and dispatches a fleet to the Adriatic sea, kickstarting the war.
Most of the novel just chronicles the this military intervention headed by admiral Huang Zisheng ("Yellow Flourishing") as he commands the Chinese fleet from China, Singapore, Ceylon and then through the Suez to eventually crush the second allied fleet near the Adriatic.

>>18407
You might think that the novel is very groundbreaking because of the topics it handles and the setting, but I feel like it just wears the skin of a sci-fi. It’s essentially like any other classical Chinese novel you read.
So while it is at times entertaining, it is also primarily a political novel. It really hammers in hard that science and technology are the things that will allow China to gain the upper hand against the West. It’s chock full of references to Western scientists and their inventions that are used in the battles. Usually when they namedrop someone then a Chinese character steps up and tells the admiral how he or she used this technology and idea to develop it further and then that technology helps the Chinese knock out a new Western one.

Basically technology and inventors are treated like legendary swords and items in wuxia and sages in older novels, the most prominent example being where Huang travels back to China for a bit to meet with an old professor of his who lives secluded on a mountain to get from him the recipe for a chemical that “turns water into fire” and then they “miraculously” return to the fleet together in half the time because the professor also has hot air balloons he can control.
Other items include “Light bomb” which are basically nukes and also “focusing lenses” that set enemy fleets on fire. Frogmen dump the aforementioned chemical into the water.
Though the ultimate weapon the Western powers deploy is “green poison gas” and then carbon monoxide. That’s treated like the ultimate warcrime in the novel on their part.

So while the entire setting sounds very interesting with the racial content and the geopolitical analysis, ultimately there’s very little that’s structurally new in this novel compared to traditional Chinese literature. Even the new stuff is just essentially a political revenge fantasy where in the end China wins and makes the Western powers sign humiliating terms including allowing the Chinese fleet to be stationed in the Adriatic, making every Chinatown in America into a Chinese concession, allowing Chinese missionaries to spread the teachings of Confucius freely. In the end, the population of the western countries rise up against their rulers due to the humiliating terms of the treaties, sort of like as if he was predicting the Xinhai revolution a bit.

My conclusion is that it’s amusing at times, sort of topical in a sense, but it’s very fucking boring like 50% of the time with all the “I fucking love science” hammering the author does. It’s worth a quick flip-through because it’s an oddity, but it’s not worth much beyond that.

Addendum is that I hope that nobody will read this in Hungary as like some “Chinese Protocols of the Elders of Zion” of sorts. As I said, this is basically a forgotten Chinese book we only translated because it has marketing potential to say that “1908 Chinese Sci-fi that talks about Hungary!”
So like yeah, it's "one of then novels of all time" if I want to put it colloquially.

>>18408
>>18407
Oh and how could I forget that the translator included a bunch of AI generated illustrations with it.
I feel like they are a bit hit and miss and I disliked how it tried to make it "Verne-like" instead of allowing me to imagine the setting myself but I understand why someone would like them, it adds to the vibe of the print series which aims to be this pseudo late 1800s pulp novel look.

>>8401
Just finished Blue Lard by Sorokin as well, absolutely bonkers. The first part consists of letters by a gay scientist to his lover where he describes his work on a futuristic secret research project where they clone classic Russian authors. These authors then produce the eponymous blue lard while writing their literature which he attaches to the letters which is harvested for a purpose that is not entirely clear. I don't wanna spoil the rest since the appeal is trying to guess when it will stop adding layers of insanity but among others it involves a schism betweens two sects of (literal) earthfuckers, a graphic sex scene between Stalin and Khrushchev and Hitler shooting blue lightning out of his hands.
The violence and sex remain as provocative as ever but he also flexes his literary talent by developing a futuristic dialect of Russian heavily mixed with English and Chinese words (and iirc also a bit of German and French) and writing obscene parodies of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoi, Chekhov etc. I think this literary ability and the dark sense of humor set him apart from other authors of transgressive fiction who seem to be mostly out there to shock and don't have much to offer stylistically.
Enjoyed this one a lot, and fyi an English translation has recently been released as well (the hype around which is why I ended up reading this in the first place).

Okay, manga is literature now! I posted about reading it here >>18394 previously.

Everything I wrote there still stands.

I really liked this manga. And the anime. I think I have been engaging with it on and off since high school. When I was a bit broody teenager, I liked it because of that and when I grew out of it I liked it simply because of how neurotically the main character analyses society and language around him.

It has a lot of kanji puns and a lot of then-contemporary references, some of which are explained by translation notes when they bothered to include them in the version I managed to download.
Like the name of the protagonist is 系色望 so when you squish it together it becomes 絶望, which means "to despair" or "to lose hope".
Or most terrible pun I have ever seen where the main character and a random guy are "old friends" 旧友 but in the end it turns out the memory wasn't real, they were just "one day friends" 一日友

The art style evolves very nicely, though the highlight is always the title page to each chapter that mimics traditional Japanese art and has this nice minimalist aesthetic to it. I actually had one of them printed, laminated and put up in my room because they just look generally nice.
The panels make for nice reaction images a lot of the time. I've been using them for years now, really. Same goes for the anime.

Most of the characters serve the plot. The plot doesn't serve them to grow.
The focus is on showing off oddities of daily life and idiosyncrasies in culture, with most of the episodes being completely unrelated save for a few callbacks here and there.

As I said, the quality of the manga starts dropping off by the midway point in publication and it never really recovers. There's this constant atrophy of the characters and the setting as everything becomes a bit simpler to the point where even the main protagonist drops his iconic phrase that he's in despair because of something.
This is my biggest gripe with it honestly. It goes on for 30 volumes. Basically once you get bored of it at around volume 15 you can just skip to 29 and 30 to read the ending that quite literally wraps up everything and closes it off.

Honestly, it made me cry like a bitch. I foresaw that there was going to be some sort of vile twist on the author's part. And there was a twist. Though what truly surprised me is how this wasn't just a quick attempt to finish the manga on his part, but rather, it was slowly hinted throughout the series and is especially apparent in the anime adaptation, which while aired later than the manga started, it also predated the manga's ending by a good 4-5 years depending on the series.
The motherfucker had it all planned out and then he just wrote the manga as long as he can until he just simply couldn't any more.

It's like one of those sort of mindfuck Japanese endings where ultimately, you're told that life is not perfect, it never will be, but it's worth living.
For a series that used suicide attempts as a running gag for most of its run, it was kind of odd to see that in the end it earnestly disavowed it, telling the reader that it's never worth it.

But genuinely, I felt so fucked up after finishing it. Especially the last page where two characters give closing remarks and an afterword. It was beautiful. It was genuinely touching.
And in a sense I hate myself for being pulled in by it so much, but I also have to realize that it's normal to have emotions.

>>18549
> manga is literature
based

Listen and hug, by Vladimir Ponkin
Stumbled upon it on bookcrossing. Now I know what pornography for women looks like:
100 pages filled with lines like "You're so stunning and brave. // You're working so hard // You deserve love and respect // Please, believe in yourself".
There is no rhythm or rhyme in these "poems", just feels good mumbling.
Moreover, author has many such books, all of them with the similar content.
it was a mistake to show it to gf, now my pandering reminds her of the book and therefore looks grotesque

This one summer, by Mariko Tamaki
I don't read comics usually but here I had a physical copy at my disposal.
Nice drawing, cute setting, reminds me of my own childhood with holidays at dacha.
But perhaps I'm a plebs who needs more clear storytelling with "exposition-climax-denouement" scheme.

The Metropolis and Mental Life, by Georg Simmel
A collection of essays, named after one of them. There are others - about tourism, prostitution, industrial exhibition and so on.
Most of his critique of modern world can be summarized as "sensory overload". If only the poor guy lived long enough to see internet! I think he doesn't take into account that humans are very adaptive creatures and can handle constant information shitstorm.
Also he talks about "commercialization" which brings things to a common denominator (price) and thus "makes them feel the same". Well, it brings them to a common denominator in practical perspective. Compare it with Soviet Union where you need connections to get import goods, a right job to get a corporate healthcare, legal opportunity to live in a big city... In capitalist country you're just moneymaxxing and everything else is solved by that. In both cases you are free to have ethical principals or aesthetic preferences and behave unpractically because of them, but the latter one is just more convenient.
Also interesting that it was written before WW1, in an epoch which is different from our but meanwhile somewhat similar.

>>17954
P.S. I like the cover. This book series in general published counterculture and had cool covers.

>>18600
>This one summer
Read that a few years ago. My primary recollection is that it was enjoyable, although nothing really happens.

In the same vein, recently finished The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch by Neil Gaiman. Illustrated by Dave McKean. If the art appears familiar, that is likely because of McKean's work on Sandman. He designed the covers.

The titular Mr. Punch is, of course, the famous counterpart to Judy. The story is told as memoir, a boy's Summer with his grandfather and interactions with a puppet show and old puppeteer. That show, and its sinister undertones, provide an emotional baseline for the young protagonist's memories. His family is understood in fragments, half-heard stories where unspoken details are left to imagination. As a memoir, no major events occur, and it lacks a definitive climax but still manages to wrap up in a satisfying way.

My first novel from world best seller author Murakami. Two storylines take course simultaneously and are told intertwined with each new chapter changing to the other storyline. The first one is about a 15yo boy who escapes from his father home and end up in a strange library, the other about an old mentally retarded man who talks to cats.

A lot of themes and genres are touched on in the story, a lot of reference to music and classic occidental and oriental literature, apparently some call it post-modernism. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, especially with the characters and their interactions and some of the dialogues are either overexposition or the author’s own wonders about his own book story.
For the positive, a japanese feeling of absolute loneliness transpires from the story, a loneliness I found similar to some vibes of the evangelion series or Serial experiment lain. Murakami often uses melancholic oniric comparaisons and they always landed spot on. I was left with a proufound feeling of loneliness and unease.

>>18430
Oh, that's a cool book, probably my favorite among Sorokin's after "Dugout" (Землянка). Don't know if it has been translated but there is an epic audio version of it.

>>18762
> it was enjoyable, although nothing really happens
That's a good way to describe it.

It was fine.

The author uses a lot of primary sources to illustrate their point, but my main gripe with the book was that it was simply overly long. Not only does the author keep quoting sources that say the same thing (which is understandable if you want to illustrate that something was a commonly held belief among people of the era) but they also make sure to spend time reiterating the same points they made previously based on the primary sources, which makes the entire book drag and feel overly long even though it's like ~170 pages without the notes.
It feels like it could have been a longer article in a journal instead of a book.

Nonetheless, I think it was an interesting read, mostly when it came to the terminology the Japanese used in the Tokugawa period to say "China", but also the chapter on the Xiaojing in Japan and the Mengzi's Tokugawa interpretation were really interesting. It really puts Meiji and Showa-era foreign policy and orientation into context. Almost scary honestly.

So like yeah, it's worth a flip, through at least. Good book.

Currently not very far into reading this. Talks about liberalism and socialism, some ramifications of what socialism implies, shortcomings and overall a cautionary tale for nations who intend on dwelling within socialism. So far, he's described the fact that socialism can potentially lead to a nation-state where totalitarianism is created, through the concept that at the very heart of socialist intentions, such as central planning over market-based decision making that flows naturally, is detrimental to a nation's development. He doesn't exactly say it shouldn't be done, so far he has put emphasis on the fact that it is something that could potentially transpire during the shift over to socialism, and that there needs to be a careful approach to some of its core tenets. Things such as fiscal liberalism that can also accompany a more right-oriented political view, are two that don't block eachother out. He has mentioned that the progressive term of liberalism as we know it today, which is synonymous with leftism, is not true liberalism and that the term has been completely hijacked by the left over a longer course of time. He also goes on to describe war-time economy with that of being almost entirely socialistic if not even communistic, given that the priority of the goods provided within society for a period of time, goes all to promoting the war-effort rather than benefitting the citizens themselves with capital, in comparison to a non-wartime society where capital that is given towards the citizens as the most important thing. And he goes on to say, that, if there is a completely totalitarian state during a war-time effort that is socialist at its very core, that eventually, this could potentially shift over to becoming the norm, and therefore creating a socialist society by consequence of a war-time period. So far, I've read about 70 pages, but before buying the physical book, I read it over the internet and was having a tough time with the translation. Overall, I'd say it's a pretty good book, and very informative. The only thing that he references which I don't really get, would be historical events, as I am not fully vested in history, but, obviously, if it is relevant enough to be mentioned, then there's a reason as to why it is. I've been thinking about maybe picking up a book regarding the history of the evolution and progress of society, as I think it would be very fitting for the subject I'm trying to tackle.

>>18982
Piss off shitlib fascist.(>shitflinging in the literature thread)

>>18987
Hayek is fascist propaganda not Literaturen. Whats next, rand? Mein kampf?

>>18987
>>18990
He literally uses fascism as an example of a socialist state gone wrong, how on earth can this be a fascist book?

>>19001
Hayek was a vile, disgusting neoliberal and thus, a fascist.
Neoliberalism is early-stage fascism /imperialism. Neofascist groups exist on the fringe in all modern societies, but they take center stage only with the backing of corporate capital. Otherwise, the class-conscious workers will be able to curb the fascist tendencies.

As capitalism inevitably impoverishes the masses, capital will always seek to save itself by align itself with the fascists. This dynamic can be seen in the USA, with the fascist presidents of Reagan, Bush and Trump, but also in India and Brazil. (Modi and Bolsanaro).

>>19001
>He literally uses fascism as an example of a socialist state gone wrong,

That's so backwards it is ridiculous. It's an obvious lie. from a proto-fascist like Hayek, such lies are to be expected. Socialism can never be fascist, since its foundation is the solidarity of the working class. Neoliberalism will always lead to fascism, since its foundation is unlimited free markets and capitalism.

If you deny this, either you are a fascist yourself, or you are clueless. Smart people have written many books about this. Maybe go and educate yourself, little fascist? But I doubt that this is possible. You are certainly way too stupid. If you weren't stupid, you wouldn't be a fascist in the first place. All fascists are dumb, have little penises and can't get laid, no one but a giant loser would ever become a fascist.(You are confusing the literature thread with the /pol/ thread. Further shit like that will be deleted without comment.)

The title Road to Serfdom is very funny because while it was written as warning it is also a defence of a Road to Serfdom, if you know what I mean.

It's a book detailing the author's travels in the last stages of the Russian civil war as he makes his escape from Siberia, into Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet, culminating in meeting with Baron Ungern-Sternberg in Urga and then finally escaping by train to Beijing and then leaving.

The Hungarian foreword says that "this is one of those so called famous books" and I guess this must have been sensational to read in the 1920s. It's got everything. Politics, intrigue, adventure, exoticism and mysticism.

Ossendowski's account is very colourful. Which is why I will not believe half of what he wrote but it's still a very good book. It's exciting to read.
Like in one scene, he's trying to cross a mountain with a Soyot–mongol guide and the tells him that the spirits are angry and they should turn back, but Ossendowski threatens to just shoot him, saying "You can die on the top or right here." and then makes a proclamation that everything will be fine, they will reach a forest and rest by the fire and that surprises the guide, prompting to ask him "Has the Noyon crossed this mountain before?" and he replies, "No, but last night I had a vision!" and then he says "I will lead you!"

Though I think it's important to add that however much Ossendowski engages with religion, spirits and mysticism on his journey, he never "goes native". He's curious, fascinated and willing to acknowledge the existence of the beliefs, but will actually find the scientific rationale behind them, and isn't afraid to grapple with omens and spirits when they are unfavourable or are hindering him. Even if he visits Lamas and lords, he always remains an European, a foreigner, and he's unapologetic about it.

Some of the prophetic/mythical stuff reads a bit odd, like there's a part where a young Mongolian lama proclaims that he had visions of a man rising up and fighting with the "Red Demons" "under the banner of a swastika" and he obviously thinks that he's that man who's destined to do this. In hindsight you might think it's about Hitler or something, but obviously prophecies in hindsight often lend themselves to favourable interpretations.

So it's essentially a very good adventure novel. Though I'd like to mention that the author wastes no time to paint a very bad picture of the Bolsheviks at every opportunity. The first two he meets are shown as barbarians who are bragging how many "bougies" they threw under the ice in the river, and later we get a story of Bolshevik infiltrators murdering a whole family at a ranch in Mongolia.

I think I originally got a copy of the book because of the Ungern-Sternberg content that was supposedly in it. The last parts of the book are spent basically making a mythology around him, how he's a stern, mystical figure who is on a divine mission. Though Ossendowski is aware that he's taken in by Sternberg's charisma and power. He also spends some time whitewashing him and his atrocities.
The Baron is depicted as a pure but zealous warlord who liberates the Mongols from the Chinese yoke and seeks to lead some sort of pure, Eurasian counterrevolution that seeks to "purge revolution".

Recently read this little play by Heinrich von Kleist called Prinz Friedrich von Homburg as Stefan Zweig called it Kleist's best work in his phenomenal book Der Kampf mit dem Dämon: Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche. I liked it a lot, especially the authentic and approachable depiction of Prinz Friedrich von Homburg as a hero that is entangled in the contradiction between his heart and authority. The play is also structured very beautifully allowing a deep insight into the psychology of the protagonist.

Besides that I reread Apuleius's Tale of Cupid and Psyche, which I enjoyed. Psyche, in her innocence, is a mythological favorite of mine.

I also reread Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, which scares and repulses me with every reread more and more. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy reading it for its intense psychological character, but everything in it is just repulsive, so I read it as a reminder to not become that kind of person.