Photo courtesy of Mikrotext. Seven-year-old Berlin publisher Mikrotext’s latest English-language e-book is essential quarantine reading.
Staring at your phone for social media and breaking news all day long? Perhaps it’s time to take a mental break and feed your brain something completely different. Seven-year-old Berlin publisher Mikrotext specialises in great short reading material and keeps dropping the odd English-language e-book amid its larger offerings in German. After last year’s experimental Micro Science Fiction by O. Westin and Muhammad Aladdin’s literary Season of Migration to Arkadia about the Egyptian revolution, they’ve now put out I want to be accurate, not shocking, a long-form interview with the iconic 20th-century sculptor Louise Bourgeois. Conducted in New York between 1986 and 1989 (when the artist was in her mid to late seventies) by German author and editor Christiane Meyer-Thoss, this gem contains profound reflections on Bourgeois’ work. Going way beyond the vision behind her famously imposing spider sculpture “Maman”, it explores themes such as trusting one’s subconscious, love as transfiguration and fear, and how watching French lavandières wash their tapestries in the river inspired her. You’ll wish Bourgeois had been your grandma (or therapist), which explains why publisher and writer Nikola Richter is including her in the Mikrotext “ancestry” of her personal heroes from the past and present. Available as an epub, mobi or PDF file (€4.99), I want to be accurate is a quick and fascinating 80-page browse on your smartphone. No better way to mix up your screen time!
Louise Bourgeois, I want to be accurate, not shocking, In conversation with Christiane Meyer-Thoss, mikrotext.de.
