‘The Farm’ Looks at a Future Where Pregnancy Is Outsourced to the Poor ‘The Farm’ Looks at a Future Where Pregnancy Is Outsourced to the Poor
In Joanne Ramos’s debut novel about a venture-capitalist funded surrogacy clinic, class war begins in the womb.
Jun 19, 2019 / Noah Flora
Ingeborg Bachmann’s Experimental Gem ‘Malina’ Is a Novel Like None Other Ingeborg Bachmann’s Experimental Gem ‘Malina’ Is a Novel Like None Other
The Austrian writer’s 1971 book is one of the most potent renderings of female consciousness European literature has produced.
Jun 18, 2019 / Dustin Illingworth
Scamming the Scene: Lucy Ives and the Fiction of the Cultural Industry Scamming the Scene: Lucy Ives and the Fiction of the Cultural Industry
Ives’ second novel, Loudermilk, lampoons MFA writing programs and the inherited wealth that props them up.
Jun 12, 2019 / Charlie Markbreiter
A Peek Into a Future When the Border Wall Is Built and the 1 Percent Get Away With More Than Just Murder A Peek Into a Future When the Border Wall Is Built and the 1 Percent Get Away With More Than Just Murder
Fernando A. Flores’s debut novel, Tears of the Trufflepig, is unlike any border story you’ve read before.
Jun 10, 2019 / Joshua Rivera
In Elvia Wilk’s ‘Oval,’ Berlin Is Where the Late Capitalist Apocalypse Finally Happens In Elvia Wilk’s ‘Oval,’ Berlin Is Where the Late Capitalist Apocalypse Finally Happens
Her debut novel is a cutting satire of a future in which corporate doublespeak, art-world pedants, and climate change threaten to undo the German capital.
Jun 4, 2019 / Alex Ronan
Neither Comic nor Profound: The Vagaries of ‘kaddish.com’ Neither Comic nor Profound: The Vagaries of ‘kaddish.com’
Nathan Englander's third novel tries to satirize unthinking religiosity, lazy secularism, and the nascent gig economy—but fails to impress.
May 22, 2019 / Nathan Goldman
Carlos Bulosan’s 1946 Novel About Filipino Migrant Workers Is Still Groundbreaking Carlos Bulosan’s 1946 Novel About Filipino Migrant Workers Is Still Groundbreaking
When we read a book like America Is in the Heart, we have the chance to be not just readers of American history’s horrors, but its witnesses and inheritors.
May 1, 2019 / Elaine Castillo
Migrant State of Mind: A Q&A With Novelist Laila Lalami Migrant State of Mind: A Q&A With Novelist Laila Lalami
Her new novel, The Other Americans, looks at the life of an immigrant family in a small town in the Mojave.
Apr 23, 2019 / Nawal Arjini
Maurice Carlos Ruffin Confronts the Horror and Spectacle of Racism Maurice Carlos Ruffin Confronts the Horror and Spectacle of Racism
His debut novel, We Cast a Shadow, is among a series of recent works that pair analysis of race with grim, fantastical tales of metamorphosis.
Apr 23, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Kearse
Halle Butler’s Millennial Workplace Novel Has All the Precarity and None of the Pathos Halle Butler’s Millennial Workplace Novel Has All the Precarity and None of the Pathos
The New Me and other recent novels use millennial tropes as shortcuts to generational fatigue.
Apr 11, 2019 / Books & the Arts / Katie Bloom