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sander pleij

@sanderpleij.bsky.social

founding editor www.europeanreviewofbooks.com

1,295 Followers  |  5,785 Following  |  63 Posts  |  Joined: 21.11.2024
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Posts by sander pleij (@sanderpleij.bsky.social)

Discover Europe's best writers and ideas - The European Review of Books ✅ Weekly insights on European literature✅ Book reviews and author interviews✅ Original essays and short stories✅ Discover writers from across Europe The European Review of Books FREE weekly Dispatch b...

Georges Perec spent years feeding his analyst false dreams and tidy confessions — leaving him feeling, as the analyst later wrote, "a terrible hollowness."

A reflection on @grantamag.bsky.social new Therapy issue, in this week's free ERB newsletter.

europeanreviewofbooks.com/newsletter/

21.02.2026 16:58 — 👍 0    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
Discover Europe's best writers and ideas - The European Review of Books ✅ Weekly insights on European literature✅ Book reviews and author interviews✅ Original essays and short stories✅ Discover writers from across Europe The European Review of Books FREE weekly Dispatch b...

"The first word I ever wrote was 'pisser' — this is how Nanny called me to my face."
😊
Here’s an essay about a bastard language born of centuries of violence, and what happened when we tried to translate it.

In this week's free ERB newsletter:
europeanreviewofbooks.com/newsletter/

20.02.2026 10:07 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Discover Europe's best writers and ideas - The European Review of Books ✅ Weekly insights on European literature✅ Book reviews and author interviews✅ Original essays and short stories✅ Discover writers from across Europe The European Review of Books FREE weekly Dispatch b...

"We edited, while the embassies destroyed documents and evacuated from Kyiv."

An essay 4 years in the making — drafted before the invasion, rewritten as it began, revised again as Bucha was liberated.

The full piece is in this week's free ERB newsletter.

europeanreviewofbooks.com/newsletter/

19.02.2026 19:56 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The 2026 Munich Security Report states: “the US-led post-1945 international order is now under destruction”

What can one do?

Here’s Queen Maxima, who enrolled as a reservist in the Dutch Army because, says the Ministry of Defence: "The safety of The Netherlands can no longer be taken for granted”

13.02.2026 10:27 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The Danish novel is a classic from 1940: ‘De kolde flammer – roman fra Grønland’, from Knud Sømersby.

The Greenlandic: 'Crimson’ from Niviaq Korneliussen – good read!

23.01.2026 08:55 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

The President of the US just called Greenland “a piece of ice.”

Just that? I turned to fiction.

Yes, in the Danish novel De kolde Flammar, nature groans and glaciers squeak.

But in contemporary Greenlandic novel it’s: boredom, desire, alcohol, and colonial trauma.

That’s fiction. Not truth.

23.01.2026 08:52 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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Can AI have a headache? - The European Review of Books « This summer my inner warrior was kissed back alive by an unlikely figure: the Pope. »

The Vatican, neurologists, and engineers all ask: what does it mean to be human?
Maybe the answer is simpler than code.
We suffer, we love, we endure.
And that, still, no AI can imitate.

europeanreviewofbooks.com/can-ai-have-...

05.01.2026 20:11 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The Vatican defends humankind against authoritarian tech… just read:

30.12.2025 13:55 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Become a member - The European Review of Books Welcome to the European Review of Books. Become a member — choose your plan and step into the world of ideas and cultures. Already a member? Log in to manage your subscription. It’s our Jubilee –– tak...

✊ ANTI BLACK FRIDAY ✊

Hé rebel!

Tell all you’re charged double, because YOU are different.

Pay €230 instead of €105, and become a benefactor — with tote bag, pin, stickers, but foremost:

the honor of paying more than asked for.

You are a contrarian hero.

europeanreviewofbooks.com/subscribe/

28.11.2025 13:51 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Thanks! Books: yes! But before we invest time, we have to grow (which we do) to enough subscribers.
EU-subsidies? I’m skeptic: too many hoops to jump through, joint applications, in the end too much goes to ‘structures’, ‘platforms’, ‘initiatives’ and bureaucrats instead of quality products

17.10.2025 15:44 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 3    📌 0

Funding ideas? I’m meek, but curious.

16.10.2025 13:47 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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10.000 — help! we have success ✨

Our newsletter just passed 10,000 readers (now 10,600!) — from Europe, Canada, India… hello India! 🇮🇳
So happy.
We focused on quality writing + design, then got new team members, and now we’re growing fast — I may need to come back soon with a second crowdfunding…

16.10.2025 13:47 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 3    📌 0
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Current Preoccupations, week 39 - The European Review of Books Any fool can see that the head of state is naked, that he is a complete phony — except for himself. Such appears to be the premise of The Emperor’s Clothes, a fairy tale I see referred to more and mor...

Any fool can see the head of state is naked, a complete phony.

I see The Emperor’s New Clothes referred to more often, and wondered: is it about the vanity of a leader? Or about citizens that keep nodding at what they know isn’t there?

europeanreviewofbooks.com/current-preo...

03.10.2025 08:47 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Texting with ... Lilia Topouzova - The European Review of Books I wanted to show that history and memory are inseparable—and that unsilencing is itself a method.

Lenin youth is made to salute an embalmed dictator, becomes Catholic schoolgirl, then historian of repression, and writer on sabbatical in Rome, with a book on the Bulgarian gulag — plus she met Pope Francis at the Biennale ✊

europeanreviewofbooks.com/texting-with...

25.09.2025 14:58 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Newsletter - The European Review of Books

europeanreviewofbooks.com/newsletter/

19.09.2025 18:48 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Eurovision?

This weekend it is Intervision: Russia + US + China + Brazil ao

And Europe?

Europe is busy perfecting its eye-roll routine…

19.09.2025 11:49 — 👍 0    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0
Glory to the rails – The European Review of Books

Train punctuality:

🇩🇪 #Germany: 70%
🇵🇱 #Poland: 80%
🇺🇦 #Ukraine: 95%

Hard not to be humbled by this.

Oksana Forostyna reviews The Train Arrives on Time by Marichka Paplauskaite

europeanreviewofbooks.com/glory-to-the...

18.09.2025 13:07 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Queen of the night – The European Review of Books

Sixteen children. A dynasty across Europe. Still haunting politics.

europeanreviewofbooks.com/queen-of-the...
(free)

14.09.2025 14:12 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Texting with … Jonathan Buckley – The European Review of Books

One of the year’s best just got longlisted for the Booker:

One Boat, from @jcbuckley.bsky.social

Buckley’s writing really stands out.
I actually texted him this year, and asked:

‘How did you learn to write?’

europeanreviewofbooks.com/texting-with...

29.07.2025 18:59 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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@cantavest.bsky.social

05.07.2025 13:29 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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@aluckmann.bsky.social

05.07.2025 13:17 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
For libraries and institutions – The European Review of Books

IP access for your institution: €350/year
IP acces + Print (thrice-yearly)
€500/year
->
europeanreviewofbooks.com/libraries-in...

Individual subscr:
€105,50
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05.07.2025 13:11 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
For libraries and institutions – The European Review of Books

The ERB injects universities, libraries, think tanks, publishers, R&D departments investment bankers, hedgefund managers with ideas from philosophy, literature, arts.

Your company or institution can subscribe via IP-access for many, of just take a single subscription. Find prices and links below:

05.07.2025 13:07 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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Beloved Blueskyans,
I need a little help
—there's a reward.

The ERB is growing: major universities across Europe and the US are subscribing. But we need more. Please forward, repost or email the text in the reply to who can subscribe.

If you help, I hereby grant you the title of INTELLECTUAL.

05.07.2025 13:03 — 👍 5    🔁 3    💬 2    📌 0

Magic

29.06.2025 13:15 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
How to abandon an archive – The European Review of Books

Sunday reading: “How to abandon an archive. When an authoritarian regime collapses, what happens to the archives of its secret police?” europeanreviewofbooks.com/how-to-aband... on the archives of Syrian secret services (via @europeanreview.bsky.social, by @uungor.bsky.social and Ali Ajasem)

29.06.2025 08:46 — 👍 2    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 2
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Unpaywalled: The European review of love itself.

In « The great schizophrenia » Nikianna Dinenis unpacks Marlen Haushofer’s Killing Stella & the enemy hiding in those we have to love.

Read « The great schizophrenia » here: europeanreviewofbooks.com/the-great-sc...

20.06.2025 13:27 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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@sanderpleij.bsky.social texted with Daniel Gascón, Madrid-based editor of @letraslibres.com, a Spanish-language literary magazine. Daniel tips the writer Mariano Gistain.

Read it here: europeanreviewofbooks.com/texting-with...

17.06.2025 11:38 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Adult content. People! We have adult content. Go to our website!
Free adult content, now what about that?

16.06.2025 10:44 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Now how to explain this? I need some scholarly advice here @fuchsflrn.bsky.social

12.06.2025 12:06 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0