Alice-Catherine Carls offers a career-spanning overview of the work of Polish writer Anna Frajlich.
October 16, 2025
Reviews of Exile and the Jews: Literature, History, and Identity and Letters from Home: The Creation of Diaspora in Jewish Antiquity.
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.
While the Monkey King’s on-screen presence in Sinners is barely longer than a minute—a fleeting interlude within a dense, two-plus-hour southern gothic tapestry—it still resonates. In her review, Tammy Lai-Ming Ho looks at the history of this monkey deity that makes an appearance in Ryan Coogler’s latest film.
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.
“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)
it’s the first time in weeks i’ve been / able to stay all day on my feet & this / makes me want to say yes & keep / saying it,” from “First Warm Sunday of the Year,” by Safia Elhillo
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?
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.
Myth lives on in Central Asia, but it has changed shape. Through multimedia projects, audiences become participants in rituals rather than mere participants, and multimedia artists create myth anew.
“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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