Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury’s Reviews > The Book of Laughter and Forgetting > Status Update
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 11% done
"Mirek rewrote history just like the Communist Party, like all political parties, like all peoples, like mankind. They shout that they want to shape a better future, but it’s not true. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent, wounding, to the point that we want to destroy or repaint it."
— Oct 10, 2023 06:45AM
Like flag
Nabila’s Previous Updates
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 95% done
"as if Passer, with his indomitable vitality and optimism, was trying to stick his head out."
— Oct 13, 2023 04:29AM
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 94% done
"Since Jan defines the border for himself as the maximum acceptable dose of repetitions, I am obliged to correct him: the border is not a product of repetition. Repetition is only one of the ways of making the border visible. The borderline is covered with dust, and repetition is like a hand whisking away dust."
— Oct 13, 2023 04:28AM
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 94% done
"It takes so little, a tiny puff of air, for things to shift imperceptibly, and whatever it was that a man was ready to lay down his life for a few seconds earlier seems suddenly to be sheer nonsense."
— Oct 13, 2023 04:27AM
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 93% done
"Yes, when you cross the border, laughter fatefully rings out. But what if you go still farther, go beyond laughter?"
— Oct 13, 2023 04:26AM
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 92% done
"Jan had never shared Passer’s admiration for things changing, but he liked his desire for change, seeing it as mankind’s oldest desire, humanity’s most conservative conservatism."
— Oct 13, 2023 04:26AM
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 92% done
"As he said that, his fist pounded the table and his eyes gleamed. His enthusiastic account of the hopes of the body was a melancholy echo of his account of the hopes of humanity. Both enthusiasms were equally illusory, and Passer’s gleaming eyes shed an equally magical light on both."
— Oct 13, 2023 04:25AM
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 92% done
"When Jan long ago first met him, Passer had spoken about humanity’s great hopes, pounding the table with his fist as his huge eyes gleamed with endless enthusiasm. Now he spoke not about the hopes of humanity but about the hopes of his body. The doctors maintained that if he got through the next two weeks of intensive injections and great pain, he would beat the disease."
— Oct 13, 2023 04:24AM
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 92% done
"Laughter was there like an enormous trap waiting patiently in the room, hidden behind a thin, invisible partition. Only a few millimeters separated physical love from laughter, and he dreaded crossing over them. Only a few millimeters separated him from the other side of the border, where things no longer have meaning."
— Oct 13, 2023 04:23AM
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 91% done
"Edwige replied that she never said “No.” Why say something she didn’t mean? “‘When a woman says “No,” she really means “Yes.”’ That male aphorism has always outraged me. It’s as stupid as all human history.”"
— Oct 13, 2023 04:22AM
Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury
is 89% done
"But this time his gesture had no effect. His own gaze was much weaker than the gaze he felt on him, the dubious gaze of the board of examiners, which knew full well that he was repeating himself and informed him that all repetition was mere imitation and all imitation was worthless."
— Oct 13, 2023 04:22AM
