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FSG The Identity Crisis of an American Abroad
Making sense of one’s home country from afar
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Dial Love and Gaming in The Chalk Artist
Allegra Goodman’s new novel tests its characters—a multiplayer obsessive, an artist, a high-school teacher—in ingenious ways.
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FSG A Primal and Eccentric Family Drama
Michael Frank’s sharp memoir about an unusual upbringing
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Pantheon The Disorienting Power of My Cat Yugoslavia
A review of Pajtim Statovci’s dark debut novel
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Random House A Writer’s Turmoil in The Rules Do Not Apply
The journalist Ariel Levy has the rare gift of seeing herself with fierce, unforgiving clarity, and deploys prose to match in her memoir.
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Zak Bickel / Katie Martin / Paul Spella ... The Best Books We Missed in 2016
And the titles their authors say they loved
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The Ordinary Perpetrators and Victims in the Boko Haram Kidnappings
Helon Habila’s new book recounts the horror and revives the call to take notice.
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A Portrait of ‘Literary Malice’
In his most recent book, Alex Beam details the disintegration of Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson’s friendship.
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How War Created Pippi Longstocking
Astrid Lindgren’s translated diaries don’t dwell on the origin of the popular fictional character—but rather illuminate the turbulent surroundings she emerged from.
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Harper The Gangly Texan Pianist Who Wooed Soviets During the Cold War
Russian audiences swooned over Van Cliburn during a fraught period in relations with his home country. Nigel Cliff tells the humble musician’s story in a new biography.
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Random House The Fraught Friendships of Eight Great Artists
Sebastian Smee’s group biography details four incentivizing rivalries between famous painters as they strove for excellence.
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Penguin Press The Humanity of The Wicked Boy
The former journalist Kate Summerscale tells the true story of a child who murdered his mother in Victorian London.
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McSweeney's Satire and Shtick Against a Backdrop of ‘Glorious Dust’
A mother and daughter wade through the loss of father and son in Olja Savičević’s bleakly bizarre novel Adios, Cowboy.
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Graywolf Finding the ‘Beautifully Chaotic’ in Grief
Max Porter’s debut novel careens between mocking hilarity and heartbreaking sorrow.
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Metropolitan A Dark Collage of Fear and Beauty
A short book review of The Fox Was Ever the Hunter
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A 19th-Century Bookseller’s Obsession With a Lost Masterpiece
A short review of Laura Cumming’s The Vanishing Velázquez
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Simon & Schuster The Struggles of the Woman Behind 'Battle Hymn of the Republic'
A short review of The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe
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Counterpoint A Sinner Reimagines the Bible
The latest novel from Mary Rakow, This Is Why I Came, could be called the “agnostic Gospels.”
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Paul Spella / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic Five Books We Missed in 2015
And the titles their authors say they loved
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University of Minnesota Press Our Gang: A Racial History of The Little Rascals
A new book offers a different perspective on the feisty crew of kids.
