A conversation between Patricio Ferrari and Nikola Madžirov
September 18, 2025
September 17, 2025
Keija Parssinen interviews Mahreen Sohail about her new book of short stories, Small Scale Sinners.
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.
September is World Kid Lit Month, a time to step beyond our familiar reading borders and explore horizons new. Here are four middle-grade novels and a picture book from five continents: a globe-trotting tour of recent publications to enjoy as a family or add breadth to your children’s bookshelves.
Eight reviewers in search of an author . . . or themselves.
“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.
Es and Is
A writer faces a surprising request: to write a negative review.
Beach Penguins
“Things about the world that we learn at school: Penguins inhabit icescapes, they live closely packed together.”
The owner of a small, independent press considers the role of book reviews in getting books into readers’ hands.
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.
“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.”
5 Questions for Devika Rege
Devika Rege’s novel Quarterlife (Liveright, 2024) is populated with millennials who are discovering who they are and what they’re for in what is sometimes called “the New India.” The novel was a finalist for and won multiple awards in India and was recently hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “the best debut of the year.”
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