Fiction

Brandon Taylor’s Sweeping Novel of Class and Campuses

Brandon Taylor’s Sweeping Novel of Class and Campuses Brandon Taylor’s Sweeping Novel of Class and Campuses

The Late Americans works the way that university towns do. People move in, move out, move on—not everyone gets to meet, but everyone temporarily occupies the same spaces. 

Aug 7, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Sarah Chihaya

Black Refuge and the Novel of Ideas: A Conversation With Maya Binyam

Black Refuge and the Novel of Ideas: A Conversation With Maya Binyam Black Refuge and the Novel of Ideas: A Conversation With Maya Binyam

“Fiction is so incredibly rife with ethical questions.”

Aug 3, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Rosemarie Ho

What Happened to Peter Handke?

What Happened to Peter Handke? What Happened to Peter Handke?

How an artist obsessed with interiority and language become a literary pariah. 

Jul 26, 2023 / Books & the Arts / David Schurman Wallace

Sculpture of the Greek poet Sappho, 1880.

In the Shadow of Sappho In the Shadow of Sappho

Selby Wynn Schwartz’s After Sappho is a unique work of fiction that resembles a group biography on the travails of 20th-century queer feminist artists. 

Jul 13, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Lily Houston Smith

Alison Mills Newman

The Strange Legacy of “Francisco,” a Novel of Black Bohemianism The Strange Legacy of “Francisco,” a Novel of Black Bohemianism

Over the years, Alison Mills Newman has become disillusioned with her work of experimental fiction. Its story is now caught between radical aesthetics and conservative politics.

Jul 12, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Kearse

Still from campaign ad made by an anonymous Ron DeSantis supporter.

Ron DeSantis, American Psycho Ron DeSantis, American Psycho

The Florida governor’s irony-poisoned ad uses far-right memes to sanction homophobic and transphobic violence.

Jul 10, 2023 / Jeet Heer

Aleksandar Hemon’s Kaleidoscopic Fiction of War and Peace

Aleksandar Hemon’s Kaleidoscopic Fiction of War and Peace Aleksandar Hemon’s Kaleidoscopic Fiction of War and Peace

While most of his studies of dislocation were set in the present, in his new novel he examines a lost past.

Jul 10, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Adam Kirsch

Don DeLillo’s Cold Wars

Don DeLillo’s Cold Wars Don DeLillo’s Cold Wars

His 1980s novels take the story of America’s postwar years, usually seen as a triumphal rise to perpetual dominance, and converts it into one about a long and chaotic decline.

Jun 26, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Siddhartha Deb

The Atacama desert, 2022.

Nona Fernandez and the Black Hole of Collective Memory Nona Fernandez and the Black Hole of Collective Memory

Her book-length essay Voyager examines life after Pinochet—and the disjunctures in public remembering the era produced—through an exploration of the stars. 

Jun 22, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Amanda Paige Inman

Cormac McCarthy, 1973.

Cormac McCarthy’s Unforgiving Parables of American Empire Cormac McCarthy’s Unforgiving Parables of American Empire

He demonstrated how the frontier wasn’t an incubator of democratic equality but a place of unrelenting pain, cruelty, and suffering.

Jun 21, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Greg Grandin

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