With two world wars, revolutions, famines, colonial violence, and state-sponsored genocides, the twentieth century was the most murderous in history, claiming the lives of some two hundred million peo…
Varia
Photos © David Joshua JenningsLiterature inhabits the antiquated, potholed avenues of New Orleans like a dense and permanent fog. Stories sweat down from the French Quarter’s trellised terraces, haunt…
Photos by Laura Hernandez.Celebrating its eleventh year, the Brooklyn Book Festival hosts writers from around the world and highlights the literary landscape in a two-day book extravaganza. The festiv…
Petina GappahRotten RowFaber & Faber2016 Petina Gappah’s new collection of stories is named after the street where the criminal courts in Harare sit: Rotten Row, where the powerful a…
This summer the British Library held another of its highly successful Bodies from the Library days celebrating the Golden Age of crime fiction. We had papers on Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh, and Georget…
Liu Fang (center) plays the pipa during a rehearsal with the Matangi Quartet.I have great respect for all musical traditions and have enjoyed collaborating in past decades with great mus…
Gunnhild Øyehaug’s “Dreamwriter,” among other things, is a story about layers, layering, the lattice of the finished work and the trickle down that is life—that wonderful image, the tørrfiskstativ…
In an era in which we spend an increasing number of our waking hours immersed in virtual and augmented realities, gliding across the two-dimensional surfaces of a placeless digital world, it is perhap…
Photo: flickr.com/people/feefoxfotosLike a beautiful, moody lover, Wellington doesn’t need to treat you kindly. Friends may sometimes wonder what you see in it, but when the city is good…
In the foothills of the Himalayas, a few hundred meters below the Dalai Lama’s temple in Dharamshala, on a quiet, winding, monsoon-eroded road next to a motorcycle garage, sits the bookstore/café Illi…
Dick Francis and wife, Mary, stroll along the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Photo: Acey Harper / Life Image Collection / Getty ImagesWhen I was a newly minted assistant professor, Twayne’s E…
Guus KuijerThe Bible for Unbelievers: The Beginning: Genesis Trans. Laura Watkinson Seven Stories Press, 2016 The Bible has occupied a central position in W…
TajaliyattAfoforo Music Club Tajaliyatt is the second album from the ambitious Achref Chargui Trio. Composed of the aforementioned Chargui, a Tunisian oud playe…
Ana BlandianaAna Blandiana is a poet of rich formal resources. Since her first book, First-Person Plural (1964), she has written in a variety of forms ranging from sonnets to traditionally rh…
The appetite for Malaysian fiction in the English-speaking world seems fixated on family sagas set in the Japanese Occupation of Malaya—stories largely irrelevant to the current sociopolitical challen…
A triptych mural by local artist John Stephens Coppin graces the third floor of the Detroit Public Library.There are cities that get by on their good looks . . . and there are cities like…
With a toddler to parent, WLT’s book review editor, Rob Vollmar, isn’t anticipating being able to go much of anywhere this summer, so he’s relying on his summer rea…
Editorial assistant Sara Wilson’s summer reading picks vary in content from knotty lovers’ quarrels to narratives gathered from the aftershock of warfare. She’s added some Neruda…
Summer weather has already arrived in Austin, and it’s the perfect excuse for WLT’s digital media editor, Jen Rickard Blair, to jump-start her annual summer reading…
Photos by Laura HernandezLocated in bustling Johannesburg, South Africa, the Apartheid Museum traces segregation along with the diversity of its people. As they enter, visitors experience a split entr…
Alfredo Véa Jr.The Mexican FlyboyUniversity of Oklahoma Press2016 Alfredo Véa Jr.’s The Mexican Flyboy is a novel likely to enhance its author’s reputation as a writer primed to…
A promotional still from the 1995 film adaptation of Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress, starring Denzel Washington as private eye Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins.Mexican crime novelist Paco Ignaci…
With two novels and one book of literary miscellany, WLT managing editor Michelle Johnson’s summer reading list is taking shape. Though she’ll no doubt spend many early morni…
Ibrahim MaaloufKalthoumImpulse!“Umm Kalthoum is the quintessential Arab,” Uncle Jihad said. “She’s probably the one person whom all Arabs can agree to love . . .”—Rabih Alame…
When Random House contacted me about translating a book by Pope Francis, I did a double take. I had worked for the publisher in the past on fiction but never on nonfiction. How on earth did my name co…