There are many books that teach writing.

But how do we learn to read better - more accurately, more deeply, with more sense for what is said, implied and meant?

The American writer and literature professor George Saunders, born in 1958, published such an entertaining school of reading and understanding with his book "Swimming in a pond when it rains".

The subtitle of his book is “Learn to read, write and live from the Russian masters”.

The Russian champions are Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev and Nikolai Gogol.

A total of seven of her tales are reproduced here in full, along with the explanations, commentary, digressions, and amusing exercises that Saunders presents to his audience in much the same way

Paul Ingenday

Europe correspondent for the feuilleton in Berlin.

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In a conversation with the Dutch writer Hans Maarten van den Brink, himself a master writer, I try to unravel the magic of Saunders' book.

It's about openness when reading, of course, about flexibility of the imagination and the ability to recognize the blueprint of the whole in the individual parts of a Chekhov story, for example, which we understand as our human universe: about the eternity of art, if you like want.

Or, more modestly, about the rays of hope that attentive reading gives us.

In between, Frank Heibert, who has translated Saunders' book into German with the usual mastery, also has his say.

George Saunders' book, Swimming in a Pond in the Rain.

Learning to read, write and live from the Russian masters” was published by Luchterhand Verlag, has 544 pages and costs 24 euros.

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