The Impending Crisis The Impending Crisis
Omar El-Akkad’s debut novel imagines a future America riven by civil war.
Jul 27, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Madison Smartt Bell
Welcome to 2050. The ‘Climate Monster’ Has Arrived. Welcome to 2050. The ‘Climate Monster’ Has Arrived.
Here’s the future for a world that failed to act.
Jul 18, 2017 / John Feffer
The Air We Breathe: A Conversation With Arundhati Roy The Air We Breathe: A Conversation With Arundhati Roy
The writer discusses her new novel, love, justice, and Indian politics.
Jul 17, 2017 / Q&A / Ratik Asokan
Grace Paley’s Crowded World Grace Paley’s Crowded World
In her life, as in her writing, the boundaries between the personal and the political were remarkably porous.
Jun 27, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Maggie Doherty
Percival Everett’s Abstract Art Percival Everett’s Abstract Art
His new novel, So Much Blue, is a meditation on seeing and abstraction, and it might be key for recognizing a new form of literary social critique.
Jun 26, 2017 / Paul Devlin
J.M. Coetzee’s Essential Protestantism J.M. Coetzee’s Essential Protestantism
In his last two novels, Coetzee has tried to recover the scandal and strangeness of early Christianity.
Jun 1, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Adam Kirsch
What Herman Melville Can Teach Us About the Trump Era What Herman Melville Can Teach Us About the Trump Era
He would point out that what plagues us are the sins of the past coming home to roost: America’s tolerance of bigotry and blindness to its own faults.
May 10, 2017 / Ariel Dorfman
George Saunders’s Lincoln George Saunders’s Lincoln
The novel ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ examines the Civil War as the root of America’s violent past—and as a possible source of empathy that might release us from it.
May 3, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Jon Baskin
Hwang Jungeun’s Noisy, Crowded Space Hwang Jungeun’s Noisy, Crowded Space
It’s rare for a novel to be so dense in social meaning, and yet so lightly composed.
Apr 14, 2017 / E. Tammy Kim
Ali Smith’s Novel of Disintegration Ali Smith’s Novel of Disintegration
One of Autumn’s recurring themes is our willed blindness to what threatens our sense of order—from climate change to financial and political insecurity.
Mar 29, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Namara Smith