Nation Topics - Books and the Arts | The Nation

As I'm driven to the home of Ivan Klima, one of the Czech Republic's most internationally respected writers, the hand of fate slips in beside me in the taxi.

Hark! The squeal of the two-headed amphibian. Mating season must have begun.

From the Satanic Versifier, more love and more death, with a song in his heart.

After we admit that all historical circumstances are specific and all sufferings absolute--that Serbian "police" are not Nazis and ethnic Albanians not Jews (and NATO forces cannot be compared p

Recent French philosophy has been most passionately loved and hated for its militant radicalism.

The high moral tone in Washington and London about "rogue" states, such as Iraq, building arsenals of biological weapons belies a shameful past.

Knowledge of Khrushchev's reaction cited above is personal; he was the author's grandfather.

Like a guest at a potlatch, laughing to see his host's worldly goods go up in flames, I roared at The Matrix--roared and at the same time was humbled, knowing Warner Bros.

Confronted with the inexplicable, policy-makers and pundits alike grope for the apt historical analogy. It's a natural human reaction.

Back in the fifties, before the term "new journalism" was coined, back when Gay Talese was writing minor obituaries for the New York Times, Tom Wolfe was a grad student at Yale and Joan Di