Robinson Crusoe, Move Over Robinson Crusoe, Move Over
If Canadian writer Yann Martel were a preacher, he'd be charismatic, funny and convert all the nonbelievers. He baits his readers with serious themes and trawls them through a sea...
Aug 1, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Charlotte Innes
Poisoned Ivy Poisoned Ivy
Much as I hate to, I'm going to start by talking about the damn money. I'm only doing it because almost everyone else is. It's not just the author profiles and publishing-trad...
Jul 3, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Gene Seymour
‘Trembling…Can Be Heard’ ‘Trembling…Can Be Heard’
A young man of 16, visiting his cousins in Calcutta in a house in a "middle-middle-class area," has just published his first poem. This not-yet-poet from Bombay is the narrator of...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Amitava Kumar
Education of a Knife Education of a Knife
The third-year medical student held the intravenous catheter, poised to insert it into a patient's vein. Suddenly the patient asked, "Have you done this before?" As the student la...
Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Barron H. Lerner
The Undertaker’s Art, Exhumed The Undertaker’s Art, Exhumed
"It's a great mistake not to feel pleased when you have the chance," a rich, disfigured spinster advises a frail, well-mannered boy in The Shrimp and the Anemone, the first novel ...
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Caleb Crain
Populism: The Thriller Populism: The Thriller
A few years ago I concocted a theory about John Grisham I was too lazy to prove. Here was the hypothesis: This bestselling author was the most successful popularizer of populist n...
Mar 21, 2002 / Books & the Arts / David Corn
The Emigrant The Emigrant
On December 14, the German writer W.G. Sebald died, age 57, in a car accident in England, where he had lived for thirty-five years. He had published four remarkable books: fluid, ...
Mar 14, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Benjamin Kunkel
Muslim Jerusalem: A Story Muslim Jerusalem: A Story
Kanan Makiya, the Arab world's most ardent and vocal supporter of America's projected intervention in Iraq, the hammer of liberal Arab intelligentsia, the arch anti-Orientalist, h...
Mar 14, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Turi Munthe
In the Year of Harry Potter, Enter the Dragon In the Year of Harry Potter, Enter the Dragon
Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin's magical world of islands and archipelagoes, is going through a period of intense, uncomfortable social change. The old ways no longer work and the new ...
Jan 10, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Meredith Tax
Don’t Call It Night Don’t Call It Night
In the United States the writer tends to become an entrepreneur, competing with other literary vendors marketing their characters and language, their humor or drama, to a skeptic...
Jan 3, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Morris Dickstein