Book Review: ‘An Earthquake Is Shaking The Surface Of The Earth'

From a New Contributor To Media Room

Publisher’s Note: Media Room is proud to publish this book review by Katherine Xiong. It was originally published November 19, 2024 at The Buffalo Hive, where Frank Housh is a Contributing Editor.

By Katherine Xiong

In his 1807 work “The Phenomenology of Spirit,” philosopher Georg Wilhlem Friedrich Hegel outlined a meaning-making system known as the dialectic, in which two entities are defined via mutual, antagonistic recognition of the other.

This dialectic has proven powerful, influencing political and philosophical movements ranging from existentialism to communism to fascism. Yet, it’s also propped up by a dead metaphor, that of a master and a bondsman, one trying to kill the “other” despite the irony that other’s death means self-annihilation.

Transpose this dialectic onto two women — an unnamed, semi-retired stage actress and her beautiful, vivacious, but enigmatic tenant Tala—and you’ll have the plot of Anna Moschovakis’s “An Earthquake is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth” (…