Books
The Decades-Old Novel That Presages Today’s Fight for Facts
Uwe Johnson’s magnum opus Anniversaries, which catalogs the life of its protagonist for the span of a year, is a sharp exploration of the daily effort to preserve shared truths.
Barbara Kingsolver’s Superficial View of the American Family in the Trump Era
The first U.S. novel to treat the 2016 election at length aims for timeliness rather than genuine insight into a dramatic political moment.
The Unstable Identities of The Caregiver
Samuel Park’s last novel explores how one person’s sense of self can be absorbed into another’s need.
How Writing ‘My Struggle’ Undid Knausgaard
The iconoclastic author, whose six-volume autobiographical novel is now complete in English, has lost his faith in radical self-exposure. What happened?
The Remarkable Rise of the Feminist Dystopia
A spate of women-authored speculative fiction imagines detailed worlds of widespread infertility, criminalized abortion, and flipped power dynamics.
The Personal Cost of Black Success
Two new memoirs trace their authors’ rise into the meritocratic elite, confronting pernicious myths and brutal realities along the way.
What’s the Loneliest You’ve Ever Felt?
The author started a project on loneliness by asking this simple question. Many people quickly recounted experiences, often with surprising specificity.
A Literary Companion for Insomniacs
Marina Benjamin’s new memoir aims to soothe the sleepless.
E. B. White’s Lesson for Debut Writers: It’s Okay to Start Small
Nicole Chung explains how an essay about sailing taught her to embrace her fears as she worked up to writing her memoir, All You Can Ever Know.
In her new book, Rebecca Traister invokes rage to unify women in a battle against men. But being mad can prove divisive, too.
The Power of Untold Slave Narratives
In Barracoon, Zora Neale Hurston challenges the American public’s narrow view of the African continent, the transatlantic slave trade, and the diasporic cultures that came as a result of it.
Writing an Iranian Cookbook in an Age of Anxiety
As my family and my adopted country endured dramatic change, I learned to find solace in the kinds of written recipes I was taught to reject growing up.
A new book makes the case for the primacy of the female libido, and for a societal reckoning with that reality.
Boom Town Explodes the Notion of ‘Flyover’ Territory
Sam Anderson’s ambitious new book about Oklahoma City reanimates a place that has too often been portrayed as simplistic.
The Silence of Classical Literature’s Women
Pat Barker’s retelling of The Iliad imagines the Trojan War from the perspective of a female slave fought over by two Greek heroes.
In 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, the author Craig Brown captures Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister perfectly.
An Intergalactic Tale Populated by Women
With the graphic novel On a Sunbeam, Tillie Walden has created a science-fiction universe of queer love, crumbling ruins, and magical forests. It might piss off the genre’s purists.
How The Great Gatsby Explains Trump
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel is a surprisingly apt primer on the president of the United States.
Housegirl Complicates the Diaspora Narrative
The debut from the Ghanaian British author Michael Donkor explores the life of a domestic worker in London, while rejecting the common impulse to focus on more aspirational immigrant stories.