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
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’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
Eat, Pray, Cringe Eat, Pray, Cringe
Elizabeth Gilbert’s next novel faced outcry for its setting in Russia. So, before she could get canceled, she canceled herself.
Jun 14, 2023 / Katha Pollitt
Olaf Stapledon’s Cosmology of Peace Olaf Stapledon’s Cosmology of Peace
In his science fiction classic Star Maker, he imagines a way to overcome fascism on a galactic scale.
Jun 7, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Jaime Green
How Black Women Writers Got It Done How Black Women Writers Got It Done
Claudia Tate’s 1983 collection of interviews is an important look into the trials writers like Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou faced on their way to mainstream acceptance.
Jun 6, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Marina Magloire
Ferit Edgü’s Prescient Fiction of a Turkey in Crisis Ferit Edgü’s Prescient Fiction of a Turkey in Crisis
His books, which examined the plight of eastern Turkey and the vanity of the Istanbul bourgeoise, take on new meaning after the February 6 earthquakes.
Jun 5, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Kaya Genç
Katherine Dunn’s Counterculture Parables Katherine Dunn’s Counterculture Parables
Dunn’s books are often described as cult classics, which fits not only in the sense that they inspire devotion but also in the sense that cults of personality always appear in them...
Jun 1, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Nora Caplan-Bricker
The Lost Worlds of Anton Shammas’s “Arabesques” The Lost Worlds of Anton Shammas’s “Arabesques”
A new translation of the 1988 novel documents not only the loss and exile created by the Nakba but also the loss and exile created by occupation.
May 30, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Raja Shehadeh
The Reluctant Feminists of the 1960s The Reluctant Feminists of the 1960s
Wendell Stevenson’s campus novel Margot examines the life of a woman who initially resists the political and sexual education her era offers.
May 25, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Lily Meyer