Major Jackson / Photo courtesy of the author. Kehinde Wiley’s Morpheus (2008) appears on the cover of Roll DeepMajor Jackson’s latest book of poetry, Roll Deep (Norton,…
Book Reviews
February 20, 2018
January 31, 2018Leïla Slimani / Photo courtesy of FrenchCulture.orgI have barely read any critical pieces on Leïla Slimani’s novel Chanson douce (Gallimard, 2016), winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt in…
January 18, 2018Naomi Klein / Photo by Kourosh Keshiri“It is easier,” Mark Fisher writes in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, “to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalis…
January 17, 2018“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” and our aim is to reach the unattainable, the unknown through the “viewless wings of Poesy.” “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” thinks the R…
January 10, 2018Misuzu Kaneko (1903–1930) is a poet who holds a special place in the hearts of many Japanese as a voice of compassion in a difficult time for the country. The recently published Are You an Echo? T…
December 20, 2017Jonas Zdanys is a master lyricist. The bilingual poet (English and Lithuanian) displays his versatile ability with a variety of poetic styles in several recent collections. In Red Stones (201…
October 9, 2017Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas (Graywolf, 2017), a poetry finalist for the 2017 National Book Awards, contends with the U.S. federal terminologies in relationship to Indigenous people and reins…
September 18, 2017A still from Buñuel’s Un Chien AndalouThe word CAMERA never appears in my scripts. I don’t prepare. I never know what I’m going to do in the next scene.—Luis BuñuelSimply me…
June 28, 2017Mathias Énard / Photo © Marc Melki / Courtesy of New DirectionsThe quickest way to turn someone off from the possibility of reading Mathias Énard’s astounding novel, Compass (New Directions,…
June 7, 2017Biljana Obradović captures the immigrant’s distrust of the permanent in Incognito.Serbian American poet Biljana Obradović has lived in Yugoslavia, Greece, India, and in the US, where…
May 31, 2017Tanure Ojaide / Urhobo Historical SocietyTanure Ojaide seamlessly blends the personal with the political in this volume of verse to paint a compelling portrait of a Nigeria always in transition.…
May 24, 2017Poet John Kinsella inhabits and lends voice to the landscapes around him in Firebreaks. In Firebreaks (Norton, 2016), the title John Kinsella chooses for his twenty-third co…
May 17, 2017Samrat Upadhyay’s newest story collection offers political engagement shot through with humanism and hints of spirituality.Political unrest looms as large in Samrat Upadhyay’s newest collecti…
May 5, 2017Cardoso’s magnum opus offers a glimpse into the hidden world of postwar Brazil’s upper echelon.Editor’s note: When a publisher brings forth a much-needed translation of a class…
May 3, 2017Laurens explores the seductive danger of a digital fountain of youth in this novel about women’s identity and agency in midlife.Technology and gender standards collide in Camille Laurens’s ne…
April 19, 2017Hungarian-born author Magda Szabó lays bare the dangers of settling too deeply into routine as a daughter helps her mother navigate life as a widow.New York Review Books is almost si…
April 6, 2017Anecdotes often shed light on the way we see art and literature. A few weeks ago, I was skimming through Rachel Corbett’s book in the Paris metro when a young man came toward me and asked me whether t…
March 20, 2017It is not easy to be a poet; certainly not when you live away from the language in which you feel, see, and analyze everything around you. Emigration isn’t easy for poets, who live to seize the world…
March 8, 2017The author of Between Day and Night (TCU Press, 2013), poet Miguel González-Gerth, now ninety, has written in traditional forms and in free verse. While his strong formal poems never fall hea…
February 15, 2017Doron Rabinovici. Photograph © Marko LipušDoron Rabinovici’s novel Elsewhere, in German titled Andernorts, was shortlisted for the prestigious German Book Prize 2010, but it is once…
November 16, 2016“When I read a necessary poem (which is different from just a good poem), it shakes me, even changes me a little, and deepens my understanding of the world,” Zeina Hashem Beck, Lebanese poet, said in…
November 14, 2016In Oer Atlantyske djipten (Friese Pers Boekerij, 2014), the latest novel by the distinguished Frieslandic writer Durk van der Ploeg, loyal readers will recognize at once the familiar touches…
October 5, 2016Daniel Black’s fifth novel, The Coming (St. Martin’s Press, 2015),is a nod to Toni Morrison’s suggestion that stories about the Middle Passage did not seep into the African American oral trad…
August 1, 2016Bhisham Bherwani grew up in Bombay/Mumbai, where he still has family and visits frequently. As a poet, though, he was born and educated in the United States, where he relocated as a student more than…
July 18, 2016Ever since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2014, a deluge of Patrick Modiano’s work has found its way into English translation. Modiano’s novels have averaged at least two or three pub…
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Mirza Alakbar Sabir and the first issue of Molla Nasreddin / Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
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