photo: Victrola gramophone by jimmy baikovicius/flickrWhat is crime fiction about? One glib answer is the struggle between good and evil. As light is defined by darkness, there is no hero without the…
Varia
A Book Bento Box post for Hermione Hoby’s debut novel Neon in Daylight. photo: courtesy of book bento boxWhile social media gives us an unprecedented connecti…
The winter break was one of long reads: Exit West, If Beale Street Could Talk, Manhattan Beach, Little Fires Everywhere. After a busy four months of editing and…
Three brief, powerful novels in recent translation enriched my reading during the last few months. Stories of unrequited love, their protagonists suffer an unsatisfied, persistent longing for affirmat…
A house in Iceland with a turf roof. photo: jonathan andreo/unsplashWhen asked to contribute to a speculative fiction folio, I noticed only afterward I’d picked two tales that revolve around hou…
Sligo’s River Garavogue. photo: dave gunnWhen I pulled into Sligo on the morning bus with a dog-eared copy of W. B. Yeats’s Collected Poems, I carried two wishes: first, that it wo…
photo: linda stack-nelsonI did not have an “outdoorsy” childhood. Homeschooled and incredibly bookish, I experienced trees through paper and water through ink. Because of this, I couldn’t help bu…
The Art of DeathEdwidge DanticatGraywolf Press (2017)It might seem odd to focus on a book called The Art of Death as spring approaches (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), but we all know about…
This postcard illustration shows the Ohio State Penitentiary before the 1930 fire that “forever tormented” Himes. I have reservations about the value of writers’ biographies in appreciating their…
Naomi Shihab NyeSitti’s SecretsSimon & Schuster Books for Young ReadersI remember coming across this beautifully written (and illustrated) children’s book when I was a hi…
illustration: jen rickard blairEven we will admit you can’t read all the time. You can, however, stay connected to literature while cooking, gardening, and exercising by listening to a well-produced l…
photo: sweet ice cream photography/unsplashWho is Aleksandur Kristiansen?The question was simple on the face of it. My co-translator had sent me a biopic note explaining that he was a Faroese poet a g…
photo: itamar grinberg/israeli ministry of tourismSafed (תפצ), one of the northernmost cities in Israel, is also one of the most artistic. The city has a poetic history only amplified by modern…
Scene from "Wrestling Jerusalem" Photo: Teddy WolffExiting out of Union Station—a slightly less historic but nevertheless still important landmark in Washington, DC—one comes to the landing of a…
CompassMathias ÉnardTrans. Charlotte MandellNew Directions, 2017 At the very time one should be looking ahead to the excellent works in t…
Nellie BlyOne of the most implausible failures of realism that mystery readers generally accept is one posed by the series detectives, particularly the amateur sleuths in traditional mysteries. In nov…
One of my favorite book events ever was a celebration of gothic literature in Stoke Newington, London: it was held in a candlelit old church, and we read from Frankenstein before discussing e…
Since returning from my time studying abroad, my answer to the question, “So where did you go again?” almost always draws a knit brow. Despite the fact that the initial reaction to its name is t…
I was struck by one of the poems Liu Xia released a few days before her husband, Liu Xiaobo, died of cancer as a political prisoner in China. One line in particular hovered in my dreams until one morn…
Photos courtesy of Ler DevagarLisbon is a city with no shortage of literary monuments. Look at downtown Chiado, where Livraria Bertrand continues its 285-year-old bookselling business uninterrupted, a…
In Other WordsJhumpa LahiriTrans. Ann GoldsteinKnopf, 2016Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words is a vulnerable journey of self-exploration by means of linguistic exile. It’s notably her fi…
Photo: Katherine Dewey HillOn a sultry and tinto-infused afternoon in Spain some years ago, a group of mystery writers from several nations were gossiping about editors and agents, contracts…
Photo: Claire Huteau (2017)MeïkhânehLa SilencieuseBuda MusicLa Silencieuse is the second album by Meïkhâneh, a musically expansive trio from Rennes, France, that brings toge…
I bought Nadifa Mohamed’s Black Mamba Boy on a visit to her Somaliland hometown, Hargeisa. When I visited, Hargeisa was a dreary city—at least that was my first impression—until I g…
One of the reasons I love living in Cairo is the fact that everyone spins yarns: the porter, the maid, the taxi driver. No one has the corner on stories—many of these stories rely on rumor, humor, and…