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Fahredin Shehu writes of Gili Haimovich’s Promised Lands (Finishing Line Press, 2020), “This book communicates globally giving more than a single book o…
Book Reviews
March 9, 2022
March 2, 2022Photo by Dominik Scythe / Unsplash A new book by a Nobel laureate and Booker award-winning author always brings with it a sense of trepidation. Will the new novel live up to the already established h…
February 23, 2022Statue of renowned Kurdish historian, author, and poet Mastoureh Ardalan (1805–1848) in Erbil / Photo by Levi Meir Clancy / Unsplash Even though they appear to have a lot to say about the historical,…
February 22, 2022Photo by Chris Wood / Flickr Houston’s Second Poet Laureate (2015–2017) and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 2019, Robin Davidson is the author of three books of poetry: Kneeling…
February 1, 2022Antoine-François-Jean Claudet, [Multiple Exposures of the Moon] (1846–52), daguerreotype, 2019.47, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel / Courtesy of the Metr…
January 27, 2022Pablo Neruda / Courtesy of the Nobel Foundation In his latest novel, Oh, maligna (Acantilado, 2019), Jorge Edwards (b. 1931, Santiago) pays homage to one of Chile’s most important literary i…
January 12, 2022Leading up to the COP26 conference, in September 2021 several hundred protesters met in London’s Parliament Square before marching to the Home Office / Photo by Alisdare Hickson / Flickr “Our world i…
January 11, 2022Giono’s hometown of Manosque, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, in southeastern France / Photo by Phil Richards / Flickr Written late in life, “Le Haut Pays” and “Camargue”—once again paired in the Archip…
December 21, 2021Gokyo Lakes, Khumjung, Nepal / Photo by Kalle Kortelainen / Unsplash In the aftermath of COP26, it is easy to see we will most likely fail to limit global warming to 1.5℃, or even a catastrophic 2℃,…
December 15, 2021Photo by Geoff Stahl / Flickr Originally published in 1994, Mario Bellatin’s Beauty Salon, translated by David Shook (Deep Vellum, 2021), takes place in an unnamed city as…
December 13, 2021Photo by Piotr Wójcik, Agencja Gazeta / Courtesy of Culture.pl Zbigniew Mentzel’s Kołakowski: Czytanie świata (Wydawnictwo Znak, 2020) is the first full-length biography of Leszek K…
November 10, 2021Photo by Aideal Hwa / Unsplash If reading Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg’s Robot (Penguin Classics, 2021), translated by Tomasz Mirkowicz, makes you think about Stanislaw Lem’s work, you’re not alone…
November 9, 2021Mitchell River National Park, Victoria, Australia / Photo by Zac Porter / Unsplash While the landmark anthology Guwayu – For All Times: A Collection of First Nations Poems (Magabala…
October 27, 2021Female patient, La Castañeda, ca. 1915–20 / Fototeca Nacional, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia de México Men in finely cut suits and women in elegant dresses gather before a gate suspen…
October 11, 2021Photo by andy lapham / Flickr Whether he is recounting his nighttime drive with a late colleague and poet around the beltway of the pulsing and vibrant São Paulo—a city so full of people and culture…
August 19, 2021The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Photo by Steven Taylor / Flickr The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’s first novel, is textually connected to the works…
August 18, 2021A dizzying debut with something to say and a story to tell, David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts (Ecco, 2020) takes crime novel conventions and recasts them in a fresh, uniquely Native…
August 5, 2021Photo by Moheb Soliman / From the series Tidings / A Protocol of Circulation, Washing Up & Will In the Land of 10,000 Lakes, to which I recently relocated from the land of infinite spectacles, Ca…
July 15, 2021César Aira / Photo by Nina Subin / Courtesy of New Directions A canonical writer of the fantastic and foundational modernista poet, the reactionary polymath Leopoldo Lugones (1874–1938) was…
June 22, 2021Nasim Marashi’s recently released novel I’ll Be Strong for You (Paeez Fasl-e Akhar-e Sal Ast), translated by Poupeh Missaghi (Astra House, 2021), is a first-person fictiona…
June 17, 2021Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing / Photo by Alex Berger / Flickr The year 2021 marks the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In April, the CCP released the latest edition…
June 9, 2021Our society is increasingly global, and the era of Covid-19 is no different. We may forget our localities and the importance of community in consuming the news and internet media. One city, the domain…
May 27, 2021Matthew Goode and Teresa Palmer in the TV adaptation of A Discovery of Witches (2018) / IMDB Deborah Harkness’s All Souls trilogy has taken a new life through the Sundance dramatic series,…
May 26, 2021Ewa Lipska / Photo by Włodzimierz Wasyluk / Culture.pl Released shortly before the death of Adam Zagajewski, Ewa Lipska’s Dear Ms. Schubert (Princeton University Press, 2021) benefi…
May 24, 2021Background image: typescript of “The Tulsa Race Riot and Three of Its Victims,” by B. C Franklin / Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from Tul…
Recent Posts
In an interview up at the Booker Prizes, 2023 International Booker Prize–winning translator Angela Rodel describes the work of author and translator…
Photo courtesy of the authorWe each safeguard our possessions. Michael buries his pens inside a drawer. Rachel hides her purse. On tiptoes, I lay my…
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye and his mother, July 2005, on the occasion of Anuonye’s primary school graduationDarlington Chibueze Anuonye, a writer…
For years, a prognostication by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe appeared on the masthead page of World Literature Today: “These journals, as…
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia / Photo by G. S. Matthews / FlickrReflecting on a visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum…
