Fiction

Richard Wright’s Lost Novel

Richard Wright’s Lost Novel Richard Wright’s Lost Novel

In The Man Who Lived Underground, Wright offers a gothic tale of police violence and urban surrealism.

May 3, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Elias Rodriques

The Rise of Adjunct Lit

The Rise of Adjunct Lit The Rise of Adjunct Lit

How a bleak future in and out of the academy has produced a new kind of campus novel.

May 3, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Maggie Doherty

Phillip Roth

Philip Roth and His Defensive Fans Are Their Own Worst Enemies Philip Roth and His Defensive Fans Are Their Own Worst Enemies

Why did it take a sexual assault scandal to raise red flags about a deeply flawed biography?

Apr 30, 2021 / Jeet Heer

John Edgar Wideman

The Craft of John Edgar Wideman The Craft of John Edgar Wideman

A conversation with one of the greatest living Black American writers on work, life, and why good fiction is like a game of basketball.

Apr 26, 2021 / Q&A / Elias Rodriques

B. Traven: Fiction’s Forgotten Radical

B. Traven: Fiction’s Forgotten Radical B. Traven: Fiction’s Forgotten Radical

The enigmatic author’s anarcho-communist politics seep into his novels about wage labor, class consciousness, and the violence of capital. 

Apr 14, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Clinton Williamson

Diorama of Manhattan at 1939 World's Fair

How ‘Things’ In Fiction Shape the Way We Read How ‘Things’ In Fiction Shape the Way We Read

Sarah Wasserman’s recent book looks at how the objects we take for granted in stories can reveal even deeper meaning.

Apr 13, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Sophie Haigney

Gogol by Ciardiello

Gogol’s Bullshit Jobs Gogol’s Bullshit Jobs

His biting satires of Russian bureaucracy examined the random cruelty and arbitrary hierarchy of an empire in crisis.

Apr 5, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Jennifer Wilson

Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington’s Irreverent Dreamscapes Leonora Carrington’s Irreverent Dreamscapes

The surrealist painter’s only novel, The Hearing Trumpet, is a wily, epicurean, and hilariously scattershot exploration of nature, religion, myth, and more.

Apr 1, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Zachary Fine

Kazuo Ishiguro at the End of the End of History

Kazuo Ishiguro at the End of the End of History Kazuo Ishiguro at the End of the End of History

In his new novel Klara and the Sun, the British novelist offers us a narrative as much about our own world as about any imagined future.

Mar 24, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Katie Fitzpatrick

Confederate Monument Baltimore

Danielle Evans’s Poignant Histories of the Present Danielle Evans’s Poignant Histories of the Present

Her new fiction collection The Office of Historical Corrections gives an intimate retelling of some of the debates and protests that defined the last decade.

Feb 25, 2021 / Books & the Arts / Jessica Lynne

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