Mina Raminsabet reviews Haleh Liza Gafori’s new Rumi collection, Water, published by NYRB Classics in 2025.
September 10, 2025
An interview with Venita Blackburn, author of Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, which won the 2016 Prairie Schooner Book Prize.
Our columnist reviews a range of translations of the fourth book in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, looking at how book cover design can change from language to language.
September is World Kid Lit Month, a time to step beyond our familiar reading borders and explore horizons new. Here are four middle-grade novels and a picture book from five continents: a globe-trotting tour of recent publications to enjoy as a family or add breadth to your children’s bookshelves.
Eight reviewers in search of an author . . . or themselves.
“When the hand writes / it becomes clear there’s a narrator / who thinks while invoking,” from “Fail Better,” by Anna Gual (trans. AKaiser)
“The tents become lilies / sleeping on sadness / and pale moans,” from “The Grain of Our Hearts,” by Donia Al Amal Ismael (trans. Omnia Amin)
“Every time we lay claim to something, we fall into the yarns of loss. Don’t let the pretense of ownership run away with you,” from a poem by Marie Lundquist (trans. Miriam Åkervall)
Es and Is
A writer faces a surprising request: to write a negative review.
Beach Penguins
“Things about the world that we learn at school: Penguins inhabit icescapes, they live closely packed together.”
Misfire
A Russian police officer tracks the surprising release of a prisoner to fight in the war against Ukraine. Recalling the prisoner’s capture, the officer regrets his gun’s misfire. Or was it?
We asked Ming Di to take a look at how US poets have been reviewed in China for the past decade. The results provide a window into what reviewers are seeing in US poets’ work and which poets are most popular in China.
The owner of a small, independent press considers the role of book reviews in getting books into readers’ hands.
What do the best book reviews do? What is the current state of the critical ecosystem? Chicago Review of Books founder Adam Morgan takes stock of book reviewing in the US.
“Where the Reader Can Be Warned”: 7 Questions for George Gömöri
An interview with George Gömöri, a reviewer who has contributed to WLT for more than sixty years.
“Finding Affinities”: 8 Questions for Alice-Catherine Carls
An interview with Alice-Catherine Carls, an internationally published diplomatic and cultural historian of twentieth-century Europe, a translator, and a literary critic.
Doubt and Interpretation in Someone Like Us: A Conversation with Dinaw Mengestu
An interview with Dinaw Mengestu, whose latest novel Someone Like Us, is both “mystery and meditation” that “challenges [the] dominant narrative with a multiplicity of stories.”
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