Affliction and Salvation Affliction and Salvation
Love was a learned art for Iris Murdoch, because it involved realizing that something other than the self is real.
Sep 9, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Becca Rothfeld
The Virtue of Patience The Virtue of Patience
It has taken a lifetime of reading, writing, and drawing for Daniel Clowes to achieve the creative maturity on display in his new book.
Sep 8, 2016 / Books & the Arts / David Hajdu
Antoine Volodine’s Army of Avatars Antoine Volodine’s Army of Avatars
Is there any other writer whose work is as strange and hermetic and gloriously, painfully appropriate to the unparalleled shittiness of our times?
Sep 7, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Ben Ehrenreich
An Argentinian Novelist, Out of Oblivion An Argentinian Novelist, Out of Oblivion
Exile, failure, the dread of erasure: Antonio Di Benedetto seems to have transmuted all his life experiences into his novel Zama, which has finally been translated into English.
Aug 23, 2016 / Ratik Asokan
Ghostly Presences Ghostly Presences
Unable to write effectively but unable to remain silent, W.G. Sebald, like the narrator of The Emigrants, is condemned to speak unsatisfactorily.
Aug 17, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Becca Rothfeld
Leaving Home to Go Home Leaving Home to Go Home
Yaa Gyasi’s ideas about fiction are suffused with her lifelong attention to the fluctuating shadows that race casts on American life.
Aug 12, 2016 / Erin Vanderhoof
Before the 1 Percenters, There Were the Uzedas Before the 1 Percenters, There Were the Uzedas
In The Viceroys, Frederico De Roberto’s novel of the Risorgimento, the Uzeda family corrupts everything it touches.
Aug 10, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Frederika Randall
Never-Endings Never-Endings
Georges Perec’s books are designed to stir readers to think actively, freshly, and imaginatively about what could have been, and what might come next.
Aug 3, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Joanna Scott
Jesse Ball’s Extreme Minimalism Jesse Ball’s Extreme Minimalism
His settings are dark, sketchy, and unrealistic by dint of what’s held back.
Jul 28, 2016 / Sasha Chapin
Máirtín Ó Cadhain: Found in Translation Máirtín Ó Cadhain: Found in Translation
They way to see the author’s satire of small-village life whole is to see the translations multiplied.
Jul 28, 2016 / Books & the Arts / Aaron Thier