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Candide, ou l’Optimisme

September 21, 2026
The Age of Enlightenment’s French philosopher wrote this story to mock Leibnizian optimism, a popular philosophy at the time claiming that God created a perfect world. By throwing his innocent main character into a world of catastrophes, Voltaire shows how ridiculous it is to ignore real human suffering with blind…

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

September 15, 2026
The book remains one of the most influential works in modern philosophy. It challenges readers to step away from mindless conformity, take responsibility for their own lives and constantly strive towards personal transformation and creative self-expression…

The Cigar That Fell in Love With a Pipe

September 2, 2026
What happens when two different objects fall in love? The Cigar That Fell in Love With a Pipe answers this unlikely question with wit, tenderness and a touch of the absurd. Beneath its whimsical Hollywood’s golden age premise lies a story about attraction, difference and the strange ways in which…

The Coleridgean Moral of the Ancient Mariner

August 26, 2026
Today, two hundred and thirty-five years after the ratification of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and two hundred and twenty-seven years since the publication of Mrs Anna Lætitia Barbauld’s poem ‘To Mr S.T. Coleridge’, when she reproached him that the Ancient Mariner had no moral, I am going…

Critique of Pure Reason

August 23, 2026
If you have ever tried reading the German philosopher’s 1781 work, you probably felt like your brain was trying to digest a brick. It is infamous for being one of the most difficult books in history. This breakdown cuts through the dense jargon and explains what Kant was actually trying…

𝐓𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝐓𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝕹𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗 𝑾𝖆𝖘

To review a book that contains not a single word feels initially like a nonsensical exercise in literary absurdity. Yet 𝐓𝖍𝖊 𝕽𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝙄𝖘 𝑺𝖎𝖑𝖊𝖓𝖈𝖊, printed in London in the late spring of 1598, is perhaps the most radical artifact in the history of the bound volume. Published exactly one year…

The Descent of the Mind

June 25, 2026
Panagiotis Tzannetatos was born in Kefalonia in 1989. He studied Tourism Management and History of European Civilization at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He made his first appearance in Greek letters in 2015 with the poetry collection “The Age of Humans”…

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About Me

Former diplomat and globetrotter, Dan Costinas is a versatile contemporary writer, translator, and editor. A true polyglot, he has authored and contributed to several dozen books spanning mainly fiction, essays, aphorisms, reviews and criticism, journalism, and poetry.

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Books of Our Continent

From the quiet shelves of forty-four national archives and ancient university libraries to the cosy corners of independent bookstores and modest home…

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