Book Reviews
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May 16, 2018 |
Photo: Zakaria Wakram Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language. – Meister Eckhart We live in unexemplary times, maddened by fear, murde... -
March 28, 2018 |
Photo of Lea Goldberg and drawing by Goldberg from She’erit HaChayim (1971) / Courtesy of the Gnazim Institute, Hebrew Writers’ Association Lea Goldberg (1911–1970), one of the most importan... -
February 20, 2018 |
Major Jackson / Photo courtesy of the author. Kehinde Wiley’s Morpheus (2008) appears on the cover of Roll Deep Major Jackson’s latest book of poetry, Roll Deep (Norton, 20... -
January 31, 2018 |
Leïla Slimani / Photo courtesy of FrenchCulture.org I have barely read any critical pieces on Leïla Slimani’s novel Chanson douce (Gallimard, 2016), winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt i... -
January 18, 2018 |
Naomi Klein / Photo by Kourosh Keshiri “It is easier,” Mark Fisher writes in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, “to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capital... -
January 17, 2018 |
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” and our aim is to reach the unattainable, the unknown through the “viewless wings of Poesy.” “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” thinks the... -
January 10, 2018 |
Misuzu Kaneko (1903–1930) is a poet who holds a special place in the hearts of many Japanese as a voice of compassion in a difficult time for the country. The recently published Are You an Echo? T... -
December 20, 2017 |
Jonas Zdanys is a master lyricist. The bilingual poet (English and Lithuanian) displays his versatile ability with a variety of poetic styles in several recent collections. In Red Stones (201... -
October 9, 2017 |
Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas (Graywolf, 2017), a poetry finalist for the 2017 National Book Awards, contends with the U.S. federal terminologies in relationship to Indigenous people and rein... -
September 18, 2017 |
A still from Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou The word CAMERA never appears in my scripts. I don’t prepare. I never know what I’m going to do in the next scene.—Luis Buñuel Simply... -
June 28, 2017 |
Mathias Énard / Photo © Marc Melki / Courtesy of New Directions The quickest way to turn someone off from the possibility of reading Mathias Énard’s astounding novel, Compass (New Directions... -
June 7, 2017 |
Biljana Obradović captures the immigrant’s distrust of the permanent in Incognito. Serbian American poet Biljana Obradović has lived in Yugoslavia, Greece, India, and in the US, whe... -
May 31, 2017 |
Tanure Ojaide / Urhobo Historical Society Tanure Ojaide seamlessly blends the personal with the political in this volume of verse to paint a compelling portrait of a Nigeria always in transition.... -
May 24, 2017 |
Poet John Kinsella inhabits and lends voice to the landscapes around him in Firebreaks. In Firebreaks (Norton, 2016), the title John Kinsella chooses for his twenty-third... -
May 17, 2017 |
Samrat Upadhyay’s newest story collection offers political engagement shot through with humanism and hints of spirituality. Political unrest looms as large in Samrat Upadhyay’s newest collec... -
May 5, 2017 |
Cardoso’s magnum opus offers a glimpse into the hidden world of postwar Brazil’s upper echelon. Editor’s note: When a publisher brings forth a much-needed translation of a classic... -
May 3, 2017 |
Laurens explores the seductive danger of a digital fountain of youth in this novel about women’s identity and agency in midlife. Technology and gender standards collide in Camille Laurens’s... -
April 19, 2017 |
Hungarian-born author Magda Szabó lays bare the dangers of settling too deeply into routine as a daughter helps her mother navigate life as a widow. New York Review Books is almost... -
April 6, 2017 |
Anecdotes often shed light on the way we see art and literature. A few weeks ago, I was skimming through Rachel Corbett’s book in the Paris metro when a young man came toward me and asked me whether t... -
March 20, 2017 |
It is not easy to be a poet; certainly not when you live away from the language in which you feel, see, and analyze everything around you. Emigration isn’t easy for poets, who live to seize the world... -
March 8, 2017 |
The author of Between Day and Night (TCU Press, 2013), poet Miguel González-Gerth, now ninety, has written in traditional forms and in free verse. While his strong formal poems never fall hea... -
February 15, 2017 |
Doron Rabinovici. Photograph © Marko Lipuš Doron Rabinovici’s novel Elsewhere, in German titled Andernorts, was shortlisted for the prestigious German Book Prize 2010, but it is onc... -
November 16, 2016 |
“When I read a necessary poem (which is different from just a good poem), it shakes me, even changes me a little, and deepens my understanding of the world,” Zeina Hashem Beck, Lebanese poet, said in... -
November 14, 2016 |
In Oer Atlantyske djipten (Friese Pers Boekerij, 2014), the latest novel by the distinguished Frieslandic writer Durk van der Ploeg, loyal readers will recognize at once the familiar touches... -
October 5, 2016 |
Daniel Black’s fifth novel, The Coming (St. Martin’s Press, 2015),is a nod to Toni Morrison’s suggestion that stories about the Middle Passage did not seep into the African American oral trad...
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