Holly Aszkenasy

writing

Essays


Rainy City 

Severine, 2021


The spring my marriage came apart it seemed the world had recast itself in exaggeratedly biblical relief. Across the land prophets preached exodus from Europe; violent rainstorms lashed the streets of Manchester. On the night of the Brexit referendum my husband and I had one final row and I perceived that our private crisis had assumed its place in another, much larger narrative – some crunching of tectonic plates on a mighty scale. Leaving him felt brave, timely. It felt like the only option.



Rudolf

The Real Story, 2019


You could barely move, in fin-de-siècle Mitteleuropa, without encountering something mystical, transcendental, or at least a bit occultish. From Rilke to Madame Blavatsky, counter-Enlightenment was in the air — or, possibly, had leaked into the water supply. At any rate, it had managed to make its way up the Danube and into the sleepy Austrian village of one Rudolf Steiner, who at nine years old had already begun communing with a dead aunt and detecting visions of the spiritual realm within the pages of his geometry textbook. 



But Is 

The Real Story, 2016



Fiction


The Watermelon 

Severine, 2019


The Letterbox

Every Pigeon, 2018



Reviews


Found and Lost: Mittens, Miep, and Shovelfuls of Dirt

The Real Story, 2018


The Dead Ladies Project

The Real Story, 2017


Yuval Noah Harari 

Manchester Literature Festival, 2016

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