#fourthissue

Whether noir is a genre or a style is hard to say, but its trademark features are known to all from cinema, literature, and comic books. Hardboiled detectives, dark alleyways, rain, and estrangement. A flickering neon sign above a run-down whiskey bar.

A conversation with crime writer Thomas Raab about the origins of mean-spirited Austrian humor, the ability to stumble and laugh at oneself, and the hopeless search for the ultimate answer.

Sendecki’s poem is a plot of image and meaning with a characteristically dramatic aura, its microscenes simultaneously intriguing and disturbing.

In the criminal underworld of László Sepsi’s upcoming novel Territorium, talk never really was an option and violence comes with the territory.

A poem with a unique strategy of internal, authorial intertextuality, not merely literary play, but a means of perceiving the world.

Legendary US music journalist Legs McNeil recounts the sometimes dark, sometimes dazzling history of punk rock and the iconic Chelsea Hotel.

An aphoristic one-word poem by veteran Hungarian poet János Marno that captures both the black humor and the utter pessimism of noir.

American expat in Prague, Michael Stein recalls the various opportunities the haunted historic city confronted him with his Jewish heritage.

In Márta Júlia Nagy’s poem, a home for beautiful crazy girls lies rotting as if from a modern nightmare or a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm.