Daniel Samoilovich – författare

The Enchanted Isles begins with a dream in which Oh, the narrator, returns to a voyage he made to the Galapagos - known as enchanted because of their danger-ous currents, which lured seamen to their deaths - ten years earlier. It was to be a voyage of enchantment, a lovers' voyage, an eight-day cruise paid for by a magical win at roulette, the number eight coming up eight times in a row.But in the meantime, Ah and Oh have separated, and so the memory dream is shot through with regret and also with a sometimes nightmarish vision of the ugly black volcanic islands where Darwin, observing mutations in finches, first came up with the idea of evolution.In a multi-themed jazz rondo form, extracts from Darwin's writings, geo-metry, chance and fate, giant tortoises complaining of human depredation, iguanas, jellyfish, blades of grass, extinct volcanoes, scuba diving and tender tourist conversation dance round and round. Occasionally the music breaks down and stutters: we hear dissonance as well as secret harmonies. This is a work of great lyricism, teasing humour and complex originality, a poem of everything."A radical experiment in poetics, a world that is both real and unreal." -Miguel Casado, La Vanguardia, Barcelona"One of the best books in Spanish of the past 20 years." -Francesco Tarquini, Ispanoamericana, University of Roma La sapienza

Tien Mai, the poet-narrator of Daniel Samoilovich's book-length sequence, Awaking Demons, is a self-exiled Vietnamese princeling grumpily eking out a hotel life in 1930s Switzerland. 'Here/ where even the butterflies are different' is a source of amusement and amazement to him as he details the behaviour of the hotel servants and the other guests, and the strange local customs. But more often his mind turns to the woman he has left behind: 'The distance between us is greater/than the empire of night', and to the consolations of Eastern art, especially the poets of the Tang dynasty, Wang Wei, Du Mu and Li Po. Like them, he stands at his lectern with his brushes, composing in meticulous calligraphy, in perfect ideograms, poems of nature, philosophy, memory and love, though against the backdrop of the Swiss lakes rather than the Yangtze river. Tien Mai is a rounded and subtle creation - querulous, humorous, cynical, profound, whimsical, romantic - and rather a wonderful lyric poet.

This book examines governance reforms in higher education in six European countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal. It focuses in particular on the governance of the systems and institutions in these countries. The book shows that each of the national reform processes has been characterised by its own specific pathways embedded in the country’s specific socio-economic contexts and cultures, but also has a number of features in common with the other countries and processes. The first chapter of the book presents a conceptual framework to analyse the reform processes as an ’implementation game’ played by several actors with diverse interests. The second chapter describes the national reform processes of the six selected countries, giving a voice to the individual university rectors and officials who played an important role during the reform processes. Their stories constitute a vivid narrative of the government drivers of reform and of the rationales of the institutions as main partners in the reform processes. These narratives are analysed, complemented by, and contrasted with a review of the literature on the subject in the third chapter. The final chapter consist of concluding remarks and lessons learned.

This book examines governance reforms in higher education in six European countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal. It focuses in particular on the governance of the systems and institutions in these countries. The book shows that each of the national reform processes has been characterised by its own specific pathways embedded in the country’s specific socio-economic contexts and cultures, but also has a number of features in common with the other countries and processes. The first chapter of the book presents a conceptual framework to analyse the reform processes as an ’implementation game’ played by several actors with diverse interests. The second chapter describes the national reform processes of the six selected countries, giving a voice to the individual university rectors and officials who played an important role during the reform processes. Their stories constitute a vivid narrative of the government drivers of reform and of the rationales of the institutions as main partners in the reform processes. These narratives are analysed, complemented by, and contrasted with a review of the literature on the subject in the third chapter. The final chapter consist of concluding remarks and lessons learned.