Following the 2024 US presidential election, WLT editorial board member Erik Gleibermann turned to the writing of playwright and former president of Czechoslovakia Václav Havel, eventually continuing his ruminations in Prague.
August 25, 2025
Alice-Catherine Carls presents a career-spanning retrospective on the life and work of French writer Marc Alyn
Our columnist reviews a range of translations of the fourth book in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, looking at how book cover design can change from language to language.
A longtime publisher of books in translation—and reviewer of translations who reads some one hundred translations a year—offers some best practices for reviewing literary translations.
What do the best book reviews do? What is the current state of the critical ecosystem? Chicago Review of Books founder Adam Morgan takes stock of book reviewing in the US.
“When the hand writes / it becomes clear there’s a narrator / who thinks while invoking,” from “Fail Better,” by Anna Gual (trans. AKaiser)
“The tents become lilies / sleeping on sadness / and pale moans,” from “The Grain of Our Hearts,” by Donia Al Amal Ismael (trans. Omnia Amin)
“Every time we lay claim to something, we fall into the yarns of loss. Don’t let the pretense of ownership run away with you,” from a poem by Marie Lundquist (trans. Miriam Åkervall)
Death Takes a Holiday (an excerpt)
Crime novel reviewer Florence (Florrie) Granat takes a bus tour through 1950s Italy. When one of her travel companions dies, she decides to investigate whether it really was natural causes.
Beach Penguins
“Things about the world that we learn at school: Penguins inhabit icescapes, they live closely packed together.”
Misfire
A Russian police officer tracks the surprising release of a prisoner to fight in the war against Ukraine. Recalling the prisoner’s capture, the officer regrets his gun’s misfire. Or was it?
We asked Ming Di to take a look at how US poets have been reviewed in China for the past decade. The results provide a window into what reviewers are seeing in US poets’ work and which poets are most popular in China.
The owner of a small, independent press considers the role of book reviews in getting books into readers’ hands.
How do book reviews affect writers—for better, for worse, not at all? After receiving few and mostly bad reviews, Chilean author Juan Emar retreated to the countryside and wrote Umbral, his magnum opus.
“Where the Reader Can Be Warned”: 7 Questions for George Gömöri
An interview with George Gömöri, a reviewer who has contributed to WLT for more than sixty years.
“Finding Affinities”: 8 Questions for Alice-Catherine Carls
An interview with Alice-Catherine Carls, an internationally published diplomatic and cultural historian of twentieth-century Europe, a translator, and a literary critic.
Doubt and Interpretation in Someone Like Us: A Conversation with Dinaw Mengestu
An interview with Dinaw Mengestu, whose latest novel Someone Like Us, is both “mystery and meditation” that “challenges [the] dominant narrative with a multiplicity of stories.”
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