To reach Nuria, you must traverse the crowded streets of central Nairobi, dodging motorcycles and weaving in and out of traffic. From the street, you’ll enter Bazaar Plaza—a large, stone-gray, nond…
In Every Issue
Photo of Bo-Kaap, Cape Town by ilyas Ayub / Alamy.comTaking the measure of Cape Town’s many contradictions, a visiting writer also discerns its manifold richness. One morning, twenty-four years ago o…
Illustration by William Wallace Denslow from The Wizard of Oz, 1900 / WikimediaOur columnist looks at the smallest language on earth—both deliberately simple and full of ambiguity—and explore…
Norwegian speculative fiction is making its way into English in ever greater numbers as we move deeper into the twenty-first century. What makes this particularly exciting is that the four authors fue…
According to PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans for the period July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2024, there were more than ten thousand instances of bans in US schools where students’ access to boo…
A review of Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Samuel Putnam (Viking, 1949) Don Quixote is the most frequently translated book in the history of literature [but], claims Mr. Putnam, has remained for Eng…
Photo by Parker BuskeOnce an icon in the literary district of Cornhill, Boston, Brattle Book Shop now fits snugly near downtown, a few paces from the Common. Hidden off Tremont, and down West Street,…
Photo of Dust Breeding, by Man Ray, ca. 1920, by Liquid Liquid / Flickr.comOur columnist looks back through the centuries to rekindle our fascination with dust. Using the word itself as her p…
The year is coming to a close, but there are still new books yet to anticipate. Here are a few November and December releases that have caught our collective eye, plus one you can preorder for January…
“Back to the Essay” “In this same spirit of valuing possibility and innovation, the current editors are now equipping WLT to engage with this century much as Roy House equipped it for the last. . . .…
A conversation between Wassyla Tamzali and visual artists Rima Djahnine and Rafik Ouidi about the Déclic exhibition in 2023 (photo by Wassyla Tamzali).There are quite a few interesting artistic spaces…
Pages from the Voynich Manuscript by IanDagnall Computing / Alamy.comWhat does it say about our society that we are so fascinated by an object that seems to retain a meaning that nobody on earth can a…
I love reading debut books. They often show authors at their most raw, exploring their fundamental obsessions, and tapping into deeply held beliefs. For most writers, the road to publishing takes year…
Photo of fry bread courtesy of the authorDesperately wanting to find a space to further her relationship with Native American food culture, a writer travels to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, thinking it might h…
Cardenal reading in Pablo Neruda’s La Chascona, 2009 / Photo by Roman Bonnefoy / WikipediaA review of Ernesto Cardenal’s Homage to the American Indians, trans. Monique Altschul & Carlos A…
Photo by Marcie McCauleyBeneath a warren of streetcar wires on Dundas Street between Little Italy and Little Portugal, nestled among other local businesses—sports bars and laundromats, convenience sto…
Photo by Karolina Grabowska / Pexels.comFrom the missing work of Sappho to Lucy Ellmann’s thousand-page, stream-of-consciousness novel Ducks, Newburyport, our columnist considers the linguistic, cultu…
Photo of Barcelona by ikuday / Stock.adobe.comMy amada and I arrived in Barcelona from Paris. We saw from the start the two cities have much in common. Both went through architectural reorganization i…
As someone who writes nonfiction, poetry, and songs based on my own realities, I am amazed by the fiction writer’s capacity to create worlds. In the books that follow, the authors seamlessly weave res…
Photo courtesy of Sholeh Wolpé“Much of the most interesting postrevolutionary fiction being written in Persian is by women, and Shahrnush Parsipur is one of the bright lights among them. First issued…
Photo courtesy of Second Story Books, Washington, DC / secondstorybooks.com In a world where literature and politics collide, Second Story Books fits perfectly in the middle of it all. With locations…
I’m worried for us. Humanity is on a collision course with annihilation, and most people don’t seem terribly bothered. Granted, we’re a species hardwired to survive and don’t like to look at our demis…
Photo by ink drop / Stock.adobe.comGoing back to the medieval period, the word besa is a small word with large implications throughout Albanian society, from law to literature to history. And in a wor…
Photo of Bordeaux, France by JackF / Stock.adobe.comIn December 1801 the poet Friedrich Hölderlin accepted a position as tutor at the Bordeaux residence of German wine merchant Daniel Christoph Meyer.…
Photo by Sergi Reboredo / Alamy Stock PhotoEscaping the Khmer Rouge, Chantha Nguon’s family moved to Saigon, where they lived as refugees. There, restoring flavor to the drab palate of their lives fel…