Playtime Playtime
The Surrealist dissident Raymond Queneau turned his writings into a lab for his experiments, and the results are still exhilarating.
Nov 1, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Mark Polizzotti
Revenants Revenants
In South African writer Zakes Mda's fiction, the past hovers like a ghost--seductive and terrifying.
Oct 25, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Laila Lalami
Gracelands Gracelands
The taint of an unjust war tarnishes the lives of Vietnam-era Americans in Denis Johnson's stunning new novel.
Oct 18, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Keith Gessen
Dark Paradise Dark Paradise
A trilogy of hard-boiled detective novels set in Marseilles contemplates the ethnic turmoil in modern-day France.
Oct 4, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Charles Taylor
My Bondage, My Freedom My Bondage, My Freedom
Robert Walser's writing--opaque and ethereal, provoking and digressive--is finally being introduced to American readers.
Aug 23, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Christine Smallwood
Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Epic Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Epic
The last book in J.K. Rowling's saga is marked by throwaway references to a post-9/11 world and derivative insights that never add up to a coherent moral vision.
Jul 26, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Lakshmi Chaudhry
The Improbable Moralist The Improbable Moralist
Leonard Michaels's fiction captured his evolution from sex-obsessed misogyny to self-identified moralism.
Jun 21, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Phillip Lopate
Night on Earth Night on Earth
After Dark, Haruki Murakami's edgy new novel, describes how the lives of a group of strangers intersect over the course of one night.
May 10, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Michael Wood
The Virtual Realist The Virtual Realist
Philip K. Dick has become the most influential and prophetic of late-twentieth-century science fiction writers.
May 10, 2007 / Books & the Arts / Gene Seymour
The Imaginary Jew The Imaginary Jew
Two new novels, by Michael Chabon and Nathan Englander, recharge the modern Jewish experience with a sense of the exotic.
May 10, 2007 / Books & the Arts / William Deresiewicz