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Adam Maida / The Atlantic In Defense of Fakeness
Novels partially based on their author’s life are more popular than ever. Ironically, invention built on the truth can be the best kind of escapism.
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Martin Parr / Magnum The Political Novel Gets Very, Very Specific
A sprawling new book set in the Obama era inquires into the value of public life.
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Vanessa Saba / Mondadori Portfolio / Getty On Rape Narratives and the Surprising Value of Plot
Why literary novels about wrenching events are taking more and more cues from crime writing
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Getty / Arsh Raziuddin / The Atlantic An Emotional Framework for Understanding the End of the Pandemic
The late philosopher Richard Wollheim can teach many of us valuable lessons about how to face the fear of returning to outside life.
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Yael Malka The Surprising Value of a Wandering Mind
In a time of Zoom lectures and distracted students, a new book champions an underappreciated state of being.
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Getty / The Atlantic The Literature of the Pandemic Is Already Here
For those engaging in quick-response art, mess and chaos—not polished elegance—are the forms to best mimic a crisis that has no end in sight.
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Counterpoint The Claustrophobic Menace of Boarding-School Fiction
Two recent novels cannily use all-girls-campus settings to create worlds that feel women-focused but prove to be the reverse.
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Pantheon An 18th-Century Birthing Scam
Dexter Palmer’s third novel, about a fantastical medical hoax, doubles as an exploration of the age-old desire to believe the unbelievable.
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duncan1890 / Getty Rewriting the ‘Boy Genius’
Caitlin Horrocks’s debut novel builds on a rich tradition of women writers who complicate the myth of male virtuosity until it crumbles.
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Soho Press Science Fiction’s Preoccupation With Privacy
Two ambitious new novels build techno-futures in which surveillance offers disturbing new threats.
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Penguin Press How to Write Poetry About Conflict
In the late ’70s, Carolyn Forché traveled to El Salvador on the eve of its civil war, knowing little about the country. Crucially, she understood how little she knew.
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Catapult The Strange Beach Novel That Would Make Mallarmé Proud
Chloe Aridjis’s Sea Monsters doesn’t care much for plot, instead seductively gathering energy through images, repetition, and metaphor.
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Viktoriia1208 / Shutterstock / Arsh Raziuddin / The … A Road-Trip Novel That Punctures Political Myopia
Carol Bensimon’s We All Loved Cowboys features a difficult protagonist whose myopia belies the wide, complex world outside her car window.
