Rumaan Alam’s Haves and Have-Nots Rumaan Alam’s Haves and Have-Nots
With his latest novel, Entitlement, he asks: Can wealth inequality make you lose your mind?
Mar 5, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Jess Bergman
Djuna Barnes’s Playthings Djuna Barnes’s Playthings
Her short fiction provides an odd glimpse at a writer whose interests move beyond the human and into something more inchoate.
Feb 25, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Missouri Williams
Vigdis Hjorth and the Novel of Ugly Love Vigdis Hjorth and the Novel of Ugly Love
In If Only, the Norwegian novelist distills a story of romance into all its private discomfort and claustrophobia. Its intense ambivalence in regards to love feels truer to life. ...
Feb 4, 2025 / Books & the Arts / David Schurman Wallace
The Polymath of Pittsburgh The Polymath of Pittsburgh
Garielle Lutz is one of America’s great writers. Why has her literary genius gone unnoticed?
Jan 28, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Kolitz
Caroline Blackwood’s Graceful Nightmares Caroline Blackwood’s Graceful Nightmares
The writer and socialite's gothic fictions were also cutting works of social comedy.
Jan 23, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Isabella Trimboli
Olga Tokarczuk’s New Rules for Realism Olga Tokarczuk’s New Rules for Realism
In The Empusium, the Polish novelist’s first novel since her Nobel, she pays homage to Thomas Mann in order to redraw the boundaries of the realist novel.
Jan 15, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Jess Cotton
Adam Ehrlich Sachs’s Exhibitions of Absurdity Adam Ehrlich Sachs’s Exhibitions of Absurdity
In Gretel and the Great War, an antic epistolary novel set in early 20th-century Austria, the writer tries to make sense of a society gone mad.
Jan 8, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Walker Rutter-Bowman
Novelist on a Deadline: Barry Malzberg, 1939–2024 Novelist on a Deadline: Barry Malzberg, 1939–2024
A speed demon at the typewriter, Malzberg wrote quickly and brilliantly in a variety of genres including mystery, thrillers, and erotica, but his core work was in science fiction....
The Illusory Beauty of “Nickel Boys” The Illusory Beauty of “Nickel Boys”
An avant-garde adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel careens between questions of style and substance.
Dec 17, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Kearse
Donald Trump Is the Authentic American Berserk Donald Trump Is the Authentic American Berserk
Far from being an alien interloper, the incoming president draws from homegrown authoritarianism.
Dec 13, 2024 / Jeet Heer