Browse: The World in Bookshops
Ed. Henry Hitchings
Pushkin Press, 2016
Don’t mistake Browse for a collection of breezy tributes to writers’ favorite bookshops. The essays in this lit…
In Every Issue
The impact of British literature on India was profound, altering the poetry, fiction, and drama of the many cultures and languages unified by the empire, and it has lingered. Victorian attitudes in p…
Photo: Andrew Cagle Hello Psychaleppo Toyour Hello Psychaleppo’s third release, Toyour, draws inspiration from a wide variety of sources, some musical, some literary, and all celeb…
Photo: Kelly Deluded “I like simple writing, straightforward and uncomplicated, and I try to write like that,” Eli Eliahu said, upon receiving Israel’s Matanel Prize in 2013. His work is characterize…
This is not the Africa you knew. These books, some rooted in Africa but mostly embedded in multiple lands, explore issues of race, equality, immigration, cultural shifts, and more. At their core, they…
Thomas Hardy’s home, Max Gate, sits at the east end of Dorchester. Photo: Michael Day There are few British authors for whom place played a more important role in their work than Thomas Hardy. By all…
Photo courtesy of the American Writers Museum The new American Writers Museum, opening this May in Chicago, celebrates American literature in a lively, interactive space that honors America’s writers…
There are three recent books from the University of Oklahoma Press that I know would make great summer reading. My own Mestizos Come Home! Making and Claiming Mexican American Identity…
As much as Managing Editor Michelle Johnson loves traveling, she also loves returning home. Her summer reading list reflects a similar course this year. Eli…
This summer Web Editor Jen Rickard Blair is planning to read a balance of books that refuel calm and creativity as well as examine human nature and our shared hi…
Editor in Chief Daniel Simon picks three books that promise to unsettle, console, and inspire. Anne Carson Float Random House I fo…
Photo: Beau Rogers The indignities and brutalities suffered by ethnic and racial groups at the hands of others are legion on the unhappiest pages of human history. Not the least of these insults is,…
With a wealth of fiction, nonfiction, and verse stacking up in his office, Book Review Editor Rob Vollmar has narrowed his reading ambitions for the summer down to these three worthy titles.…
Rahim AlHaj Letters from Iraq: Oud and String Quintet Smithsonian Folkways Iraqi-born composer Rahim AlHaj’s latest album, Letters from Iraq, is his most ambitious to date. AlHaj…
Photo: Annabelle Shemer The creative collaboration between myself and Israeli poet Gili Haimovich began around 2009. The first poem of hers to be published in English translation was “Evolution,” wit…
Photo: Bequest/Pixabay By a lake, on a train, deep in a canyon, or at home on your back porch: it’s time to catch up on the outstanding global writing publishers have been bringing out since January.…
Stratford Theatre. Photo by Richard Bain For half the year, the hamlet of Stratford, Ontario—named after the birthplace of William Shakespeare—is much like any other small North American town. But in…
Washington, DC, is a city that holds culture and the arts close to its heart. When the stereotypes and outside-the-beltway misconceptions about what this city is—political infighting, opportunistic s…
Kim Stafford The Flavor of Unity: Post-Election Poems Little Infinities, 2017 Are you dreading the future after reading all the dystopian lit in this issue, or feeling paralyzed by the ge…
Image: NEYRO2008/123rf stock photo In his address to the International Association of Crime Writers 2013 meeting in Oxford, Christopher MacLehose commented that publishers like him are always looking…
OY Space Diaspora Crammed Discs This issue’s special section on climate dystopias set me wondering what kind of responses to an uncertain future dwell in the world music community. One…
Illustration: Verso Books Despite the popular culture trope that the golden age of activism (the 1950s and ’60s) is over, despite the endless distractions offered by digital entertainment, and despit…
A still from the film Ten Years (2015). When Hong Kong was returned to communist China in 1997 under the “one country, two systems” principle, no one really knew for sure what would happen t…
Skeppsholmen Island in central Stockholm, home of Moderna Museet where the Stockholm Literature festival takes place. Photo: Routes North/www.routesnorth.com As literary events go, Stockholm Literatu…
Alina Bronsky Baba Dunja’s Last Love Trans. Tim Mohr Europa Editions Alina Bronsky is skillful at inventing darkly humorous protagonists, and Baba Dunja is no exception. This short novel is a surp…