Mathilde Montpetit
@mathildegm.bsky.social
PhD student & translator (French-English) studying medieval West Africa, eunuchs, and the Mediterranean.
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
urbanomnibus.net/2025/11/a-qu... back on da horse
A Question About Tomorrow - Urban Omnibus
As goes Ravenswood, so goes New York’s energy future. So what will it take to bring a just transition to the city’s largest power plant?
urbanomnibus.net
November 6, 2025 at 6:05 PM
urbanomnibus.net/2025/11/a-qu... back on da horse
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
Of mixed Surinamese–Dutch heritage, Paramaribo-born Gerrit Schouten (1779–1839) fashioned intricate papier-mâché dioramas depicting life on Suriname’s colonial plantations — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/gerrit-schouten-suriname-dioramas/
October 21, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Of mixed Surinamese–Dutch heritage, Paramaribo-born Gerrit Schouten (1779–1839) fashioned intricate papier-mâché dioramas depicting life on Suriname’s colonial plantations — https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/gerrit-schouten-suriname-dioramas/
I have two new pieces up at @publicdomainrev.bsky.social this week: first, about the human-animal hybrids of Louis XIV's court painter Charles le Brun...
publicdomainreview.org/collection/l...
publicdomainreview.org/collection/l...
October 17, 2025 at 11:16 AM
I have two new pieces up at @publicdomainrev.bsky.social this week: first, about the human-animal hybrids of Louis XIV's court painter Charles le Brun...
publicdomainreview.org/collection/l...
publicdomainreview.org/collection/l...
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
Berlin pals, this is happening tomorrow! Please come along. The book is great and Tim is very funny and eloquent. It’ll be nice.
October 8, 2025 at 9:17 AM
Berlin pals, this is happening tomorrow! Please come along. The book is great and Tim is very funny and eloquent. It’ll be nice.
This morning, The Berliner began – against the will of its staff – posting a series of advertisements for the Nova Festival Exhibition. Our concerns having been dismissed and stonewalled, we have had no choice but to strike.
October 5, 2025 at 1:44 PM
This morning, The Berliner began – against the will of its staff – posting a series of advertisements for the Nova Festival Exhibition. Our concerns having been dismissed and stonewalled, we have had no choice but to strike.
The amazing Cristina Rivera Garza is serving as guest curator at the ILB this year – had an amazing time talking to her about the events she organized and what multilingual literature can offer us in these horrible times:
Cristina Rivera Garza on what to expect from the ILB 2025 - The Berliner
The Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin (ILB) is the highlight of the literary calendar. We spoke with author-curator Cristina Rivera Garza about what to expect.
www.the-berliner.com
September 3, 2025 at 10:14 PM
The amazing Cristina Rivera Garza is serving as guest curator at the ILB this year – had an amazing time talking to her about the events she organized and what multilingual literature can offer us in these horrible times:
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
I had a great time picking 12 short stories and writing about them for Jonathan Gibbs’ great project, A Personal Anthology. You can read about them - and browse the archives of past writers’ choices - here:
And off it goes, Gabriel Flynn’s Personal Anthology, bag on its arm, slung like a shield, having lost its job as a night watchman in a Barcelona campsite, roaming the shop floor in quadrants, resisting the urge to let satire ring through its voice, finding itself in the last chamber already…
A Personal Anthology, by Gabriel Flynn
I selected the twelve stories in this anthology with the following test in mind: if I were to arrive at a secluded holiday rental and discover I had left my bag of books on the bus from the nearest to...
apersonalanthology.substack.com
June 27, 2025 at 1:24 PM
I had a great time picking 12 short stories and writing about them for Jonathan Gibbs’ great project, A Personal Anthology. You can read about them - and browse the archives of past writers’ choices - here:
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
London pals, on July 7th I’m going to be talking about Poor Ghost! with the brilliant @nrolah.bsky.social at Reference Point bookshop, WC2R. Come and join if you’re free!
Poor Ghost!
conversation x book signing
www.eventbrite.co.uk
June 24, 2025 at 10:42 AM
London pals, on July 7th I’m going to be talking about Poor Ghost! with the brilliant @nrolah.bsky.social at Reference Point bookshop, WC2R. Come and join if you’re free!
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
My debut novel, Poor Ghost! is out today with @sceptrebooks.bsky.social
It’s about class, mourning, love, fathers, Manchester, and lots of other stuff.
I’m proud of it and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.
It’s about class, mourning, love, fathers, Manchester, and lots of other stuff.
I’m proud of it and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.
May 22, 2025 at 1:05 PM
My debut novel, Poor Ghost! is out today with @sceptrebooks.bsky.social
It’s about class, mourning, love, fathers, Manchester, and lots of other stuff.
I’m proud of it and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.
It’s about class, mourning, love, fathers, Manchester, and lots of other stuff.
I’m proud of it and I hope you’ll enjoy it too.
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
FULL LINEUP for our little festival of Australian and Aoteoroa/New Zealand literature in Berlin on May 24th!! Come see professors, poets, artists, & novelists (& me); come hear about Weiss & Bismarck's bastards & Sebald in the desert & multidirectional war memory >>
stadtsprachen.de/en/event/par...
stadtsprachen.de/en/event/par...
PARATAXE Symposium XVI = Antipodes: Down under in Berlin – the Australian & New Zealand authors of Berlin
Draft program: 13:30: Kick-offWith Alexander Wells and Martin Jankowski 14:00 – 15:30: Panel 1 (in German)NEIGHBOURS. Encounters, translations, suggestions.Keynote: Prof. Anja SchwarzPanel: Joel Scott...
stadtsprachen.de
April 30, 2025 at 8:46 AM
FULL LINEUP for our little festival of Australian and Aoteoroa/New Zealand literature in Berlin on May 24th!! Come see professors, poets, artists, & novelists (& me); come hear about Weiss & Bismarck's bastards & Sebald in the desert & multidirectional war memory >>
stadtsprachen.de/en/event/par...
stadtsprachen.de/en/event/par...
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
in this month's Berliner mag, I waded in to the "brodernism" debate—and called time on the genre of anglophone literary criticism that was designed to go viral on Twitter >>
www.the-berliner.com/books/broder...
www.the-berliner.com/books/broder...
In search of “Brodernism”: Where is this maximalist cult of difficulty? - The Berliner
It's possible to read literature in translation and not fetishise it – we do it all the time.
www.the-berliner.com
April 11, 2025 at 10:18 AM
in this month's Berliner mag, I waded in to the "brodernism" debate—and called time on the genre of anglophone literary criticism that was designed to go viral on Twitter >>
www.the-berliner.com/books/broder...
www.the-berliner.com/books/broder...
A pleasure as always to spend some time with Seagull Books' stable of world-bending fiction:
Thomas Mann’s Overcoat: Surreal, speculative, bizarre - The Berliner
Ugly coats, invisible elephants and giant monuments having sex with the clouds: Istvan Vörös' new novel manages to outdo the subconscious.
www.the-berliner.com
April 8, 2025 at 10:50 AM
A pleasure as always to spend some time with Seagull Books' stable of world-bending fiction:
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
in my urgent, whipsmart, unputdownable column in last month's Berliner, which has been described by both Zadie Smith and Ocean Vuong as "necessary", I call for an end to the book blurb—because it's ugly & stupid & skews the industry towards the well-connected >>
www.the-berliner.com/books/editor...
www.the-berliner.com/books/editor...
Blurb your enthusiasm: The case for abolishing the book blurb - The Berliner
"Some of the worst-written pieces of English on the planet". Our resident book critic wants the book blurb gone once and for all.
www.the-berliner.com
April 7, 2025 at 1:09 PM
in my urgent, whipsmart, unputdownable column in last month's Berliner, which has been described by both Zadie Smith and Ocean Vuong as "necessary", I call for an end to the book blurb—because it's ugly & stupid & skews the industry towards the well-connected >>
www.the-berliner.com/books/editor...
www.the-berliner.com/books/editor...
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
Viktor Orbán's Hungary: scourge of the EU, role model for the US right. For @thebaffler.com, I wrote about how the Orbán regime seeks legitimacy by telling dodgy stories about the 20th century—stories not all so different from those that we've been telling in the West
thebaffler.com/salvos/house...
thebaffler.com/salvos/house...
House of the Rising Hun | Alexander Wells
In Budapest, the House of Terror museum is a physical embodiment of Viktor Orbán’s ambition to rewrite Hungary’s national myths along authoritarian lines.
thebaffler.com
March 25, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Viktor Orbán's Hungary: scourge of the EU, role model for the US right. For @thebaffler.com, I wrote about how the Orbán regime seeks legitimacy by telling dodgy stories about the 20th century—stories not all so different from those that we've been telling in the West
thebaffler.com/salvos/house...
thebaffler.com/salvos/house...
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
Berliners, my novel is coming out in two months and I'm throwing a launch party at @lettretage.de with my great pal @ajbwells.bsky.social. Come along!
March 18, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Berliners, my novel is coming out in two months and I'm throwing a launch party at @lettretage.de with my great pal @ajbwells.bsky.social. Come along!
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
proud to see The Berliner – and specifically @mathildegm.bsky.social – at the top of the critical praise for Peter Cornell's WAYS OF PARADISE .... sucked in Josh Cohen!! (also buy this book it's amazing)
February 19, 2025 at 12:02 PM
proud to see The Berliner – and specifically @mathildegm.bsky.social – at the top of the critical praise for Peter Cornell's WAYS OF PARADISE .... sucked in Josh Cohen!! (also buy this book it's amazing)
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
I first saw The Klezmer Project, a beautiful film that plays with fiction, history, text & image, urging us to consider culture beyond blood and nation, at Berlinale 2023. @jewishcurrents.bsky.social let me write about it. Thank you, Nathan & Nora, for supporting and editing this labor of years.
The film The Klezmer Project, writes Sanders Isaac Bernstein, suggests a new ethic of diasporism—rejecting both the violence of Zionism and the sentimental dream of recovering a Yiddish past.
Now online from our Fall/Winter 2024 issue:
Now online from our Fall/Winter 2024 issue:
Sonic Bloom
The film The Klezmer Project suggests a new ethic of diasporism—rejecting both the violence of Zionism and the sentimental dream of recovering a Yiddish…
jewishcurrents.org
February 18, 2025 at 6:38 PM
I first saw The Klezmer Project, a beautiful film that plays with fiction, history, text & image, urging us to consider culture beyond blood and nation, at Berlinale 2023. @jewishcurrents.bsky.social let me write about it. Thank you, Nathan & Nora, for supporting and editing this labor of years.
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
Berliners: my football club is starting a women’s team and we’re looking for players. Please share if you know anyone who might want to join a fun, inclusive women’s football team with professional coaches.
February 18, 2025 at 10:32 AM
Berliners: my football club is starting a women’s team and we’re looking for players. Please share if you know anyone who might want to join a fun, inclusive women’s football team with professional coaches.
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
"One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow..."
My wintry The Berliner column about snow in literature at a time we're getting lots less of it—from Stevens and Stifter to Stepanova and Amy Waldman >>>
www.the-berliner.com/books/what-d...
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow..."
My wintry The Berliner column about snow in literature at a time we're getting lots less of it—from Stevens and Stifter to Stepanova and Amy Waldman >>>
www.the-berliner.com/books/what-d...
A mind of winter: What does snow mean - and what will happen when it disappears? - The Berliner
Photo: IMAGO / Schöning One must have a mind of winter / To regard the frost and the boughs / Of the pine-trees crusted with snow, wrote Wallace Stevens,
www.the-berliner.com
February 14, 2025 at 11:07 AM
"One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow..."
My wintry The Berliner column about snow in literature at a time we're getting lots less of it—from Stevens and Stifter to Stepanova and Amy Waldman >>>
www.the-berliner.com/books/what-d...
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow..."
My wintry The Berliner column about snow in literature at a time we're getting lots less of it—from Stevens and Stifter to Stepanova and Amy Waldman >>>
www.the-berliner.com/books/what-d...
It was an honor to review Omar Khalifa's SAND-CATCHER, out now from @coffeehousepress.bsky.social, for the Berliner this month. Whether about the Nakba to the current genocide, we demand so much of Palestinians' memories and grief:
Sand-Catcher: Palestinian resistance and the pain of remembrance - The Berliner
Omar Khalifah's latest novel, Sand-Catcher, is concerned with memory, victimhood, and who is able to determine how we speak about a traumatic past.
www.the-berliner.com
February 13, 2025 at 11:25 AM
It was an honor to review Omar Khalifa's SAND-CATCHER, out now from @coffeehousepress.bsky.social, for the Berliner this month. Whether about the Nakba to the current genocide, we demand so much of Palestinians' memories and grief:
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
As @ajbwells.bsky.social has been saying (and Michel Friedman, a former CDU rep, for what it’s worth), the greatest threat to german democracy is the CDU burning the brandmauer and collaborating with the AfD…god these quotes are alarming.
A named CDU official: “People have had enough of Nazi-bashing the AfD and talk about firewalls.” An unnamed one: “We’re not going to let some shitty court, or European law, or the Geneva conventions tell us what to do.”
"Scheiss-Gerichte" - so reden CDUler jetzt über den Rechtsstaat. Es geht um viel mehr als die Migration. Das sollte allen klar sein.
www.zeit.de/2025/05/asyl...
www.zeit.de/2025/05/asyl...
January 29, 2025 at 11:08 AM
As @ajbwells.bsky.social has been saying (and Michel Friedman, a former CDU rep, for what it’s worth), the greatest threat to german democracy is the CDU burning the brandmauer and collaborating with the AfD…god these quotes are alarming.
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
✒️📓Join us for "Writing Against the Clock: Nurturing Your Creativity in the Academic World" In Pt 1 we welcome @irinadumitrescu.bsky.social , @bruceholsinger.bsky.social , Julia Istomnia, & Helen Sword. In Pt 2, we write together 😎Register now! 🔗1: bit.ly/MAAGSCWrite1 🔗2: bit.ly/MAAGSCWrite2
January 27, 2025 at 6:10 PM
✒️📓Join us for "Writing Against the Clock: Nurturing Your Creativity in the Academic World" In Pt 1 we welcome @irinadumitrescu.bsky.social , @bruceholsinger.bsky.social , Julia Istomnia, & Helen Sword. In Pt 2, we write together 😎Register now! 🔗1: bit.ly/MAAGSCWrite1 🔗2: bit.ly/MAAGSCWrite2
Reposted by Mathilde Montpetit
CDU breaking the taboo on coalitioning with the far right remains the greatest threat to German democracy. But you wouldn't know that from the anglophone papers
AfD is polling at around 20% in all the relevant German polls, CDU is at 30%, SPD at 15%, Grüne (Greens) at 15%. FDP, BSW and Die Linke are hovering around the 5% threshhold. (Polls haven't really moved since about half a year at least.)
www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
As economies suffer, ideologies lean right. The AfD party in Germany is now polling in the lead.
January 27, 2025 at 2:12 PM
CDU breaking the taboo on coalitioning with the far right remains the greatest threat to German democracy. But you wouldn't know that from the anglophone papers
It was a real pleasure to round out 2024, the Year of Surrealism, with Saskia Vogel's new translation of Peter Cornell's THE WAYS OF PARADISE, out now from @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social:
The Ways of Paradise: A pitch-perfect satire of academia written in footnotes - The Berliner
Translated by Saskia Vogel, The Ways of Paradise from Peter Cornell gives us beguilingly ambiguous novel-in-footnotes.
www.the-berliner.com
January 22, 2025 at 12:10 AM
It was a real pleasure to round out 2024, the Year of Surrealism, with Saskia Vogel's new translation of Peter Cornell's THE WAYS OF PARADISE, out now from @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social: