A Ukrainian writer looks outside the country for three books that help illuminate what threatens modern Ukraine.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Barbara Demick
This…
Reading Lists
It’s the holiday season once again, and whether you’re shopping for Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Christmas, WLT has a new book for every reader on your list. For the Beatnik Diane…
It is hard for me to believe that this column has appeared in almost every issue of WLT for a decade, and I am gratified that it has been so well received. For that I thank WLT’…
The following books offer insights into the hot, gritty quotidian of a desert nation and the machinations of an authoritarian power structure as integral to Egypt’s character as the Nile. The…
World Literatuture Today published an earlier version of this booklist of international environmental literature in its January 2009 issue offering selections from seventeen countries or regions…
In exploring the ever-fluid realities of the contemporary environment, few mediums are as well suited as cinema. Through the recording and manipulation of images, sound, and temporal duration, the cin…
Digital media editor Jen Rickard Blair’s summer reading picks range from multiethnic mystery to dystopian sci-fi. We suspect she’ll read these in a lawn chair or on the…
Cat people: we aren’t known for much other than spinsterhood, paranoia, emotional and social disconnection. Our one spokesperson who’s more than quaint at best is Catwoman. But lately there’s been…
The Watchtower Elizabeth Harrower The Watchtower, first published in 1966, is a psychological novel of class and power set in Sydney in the 1940s. Laura, the elder sister, had ambitions to be…
It should go without saying that children bear the brunt of war as a nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Yet Graça Machel’s 1996 UNICEF report on the impact of war on children was new in both scope and…
Translated literature is for grown-ups—or so goes conventional anglophone wisdom. And yet there are excellent translated titles available for younger readers, offering them a broader literary pala…
It’s the holiday season, and whether you’re shopping for Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Christmas, WLT has a new book for every reader on your list. For the Activist Juliana Spahr…
What distinguishes the modern surveillance-and-control state from its predecessors is technodeterminism: the use of algorithms, not human beings, to monitor and shape citizens’ attitudes and behavior.…
In the print edition of WLT, I recommended LGBT books with a political slant. These books reflect the importance of our role as artists. At the intersection of art and sexuality, art must tru…
More than a century after the abolition of slavery, the market for human beings is alive and well. From violent abductions and the sale of family members to voluntary…
Writers of narrative or creative nonfiction often “immerse” themselves in places or with subjects for long periods in order to write about subjects intimately and in-depth. But due to familial res…
When we asked Yousef Khanfar, guest editor of our March 2013 issue, to come up with a list of his favorite photography books, he sent us the following list of thirty-two essential titles. These ar…
A friend recently came across a book review that described my novel, The Darlings, as a “financial thriller.” She wrinkled her nose. “Financial thriller?” she as…
Testimonial narrative is at once a discrete literary genre and an acknowledgment of the limits of literature itself. Rather than evoking oppression and brutality as fiction might, testimonial lite…
There’s no disputing the excellence of To Kill a Mockingbird, The Trial, and the other creative works that often appear on best-of law-and-lit lists. But there are many more novels,…- History is usually about the “big picture”: geopolitics, religious change, social movements. Sometimes, it’s about the “little picture” and called “everyday.” I like the latter—the story of how pe…
- About her mixed-genre recommendations, Giannina Braschi says, “I am always looking for originality. And originality is going back to the origin and finding an empty chair. Would you gladly sit on…
- Michael A. Morrison's piece "Fun with Your New Head: Getting into SF" records a multitude of great reads for diving into science fiction. For the ease of building your must-read list, following is a l…
- Whether seeking upward mobility, pursuing adventure, or escaping war, the characters in these migration narratives unsettle myths and demonstrate how geographic shifts impact everything from ident…
- A supplement to the May 2012 issue of WLT: further reading on Iran, Iraq, and Palestine. Iran Simin Daneshvar, Savushun: A Novel about Modern Iran, tr. M. R. Ghan…
