is a leading Latvian intellectual and translator. She helped to create Latvian cultural journal Rigas Laiks.
The minimalist stories and comics of Etgar Keret have won many readers in Israel, Poland, Hungary, China, the United States and a dozen other countries. In late October 2012, Keret visited Riga, where he met with the readers of his book of short stories, The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories. Later he entertained a smaller audience at the residence of the Israeli ambassador.
“It’s not justice, it’s not equality, it’s not a warm bath.” In Riga to deliver the annual Isaiah Berlin lecture, Michael Ignatieff talks to Ieva Lesinska, editor of Rigas Laiks, about Berlin’s definition of freedom, politics and the freedom not to be political.
A psychology degree from Columbia, a career at Radio Liberty and a penchant for “alternative rock”, Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves is the image of the modern statesman. In interview with Ieva Lesinska, he enthuses about progressive online healthcare systems, citizens data rights and NATO military bases.
Christopher Ricks, professor of humanities at Boston University and professor of poetry at Oxford University, is famous for his close readings of Milton, Keats, and Eliot, and also for his passion for the music of Bob Dylan. This culminated in his book Dylan’s “Visions of Sin” (2003), an analysis of Dylan’s lyrics that had some critics grumble that Ricks could talk one into believing that even a phone book is poetry. Ieva Lesinska, editor of Rigas Laiks, decided to find out for herself.
Pre-eminent American literary critic Harold Bloom’s twenty-ninth book, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, was officially launched a few hours after this conversation took place in his Manhattan apartment on 26 October 2004.
