Maria Margaronis | The Nation

The Bastard of Istanbul, a saga of two interwoven families, bravely violates Turkish taboo with its description of the Armenian genocide.

If Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk is a political writer, it is by virtue of his sympathy for what is old and faded, for what no longer matters, or what never did.

Friends in the States seemed to assume that this was London's 9/11--it wasn't.

The attacks seemed designed to maximize fear, not casualties.

Michael Cunningham delivers a historical/noir/sci-fi novel haunted by 9/11 and Walt Whitman.

Labour's big tent is shrinking.

"We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant." So said the philosopher Karl Popper near the end of World War II.

Disillusionment is the most painful of emotions.

Pre-Olympics, anxious bravado prevails.

There's a temptation to begin with death. The dark title of A.S. Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories suggests it; the phrase is also a riposte to D.H.