New York Trance — Geoff Dyer and the Life of the WriterIn Dyer's repetitions and leitmotifs, we get the sense of watching a mind traveling between planes of existence....TOBY LLOYDNONFICTIONFICTIONLITERARY FICTION
Bali Diary: At the 2015 Ubud Writers and Readers FestivalA visit to the 2015 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali....MARIA BUSTILLOSLITERARY FICTION
A Strange Mind: An Interview with Orhan PamukThe novel is about modern city life, and the characters may be poor, but they are very modern. Their problem is adjusting to the individuality of the city....BRUCE ROBBINSFICTIONLITERARY FICTION
Here Be Dragons: On Literary CartographyAndrew DeGraff's "Plotted: A Literary Atlas" is a book of maps based on great works of literature....JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARKART & ARCHITECTURELITERARY FICTION
All Is Permitted, All Over Again: Oliver Ready’s Translation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”Oliver Ready's translation of Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" shows what reactionary work it was....BORIS DRALYUKLITERARY FICTION
The Ground Beneath His FeetVeteran Rushdie readers will find in his most recent novel, "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights," familiar hallmarks of his imagination....BINA GOGINENILITERARY FICTION
Superheroes in a Time of Terror: Rushdie’s 1001 NightsComic books, climate change, and caliphates in Salman Rushdie's "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights."...ANDREW LANHAMLITERARY FICTION
Postcards from the ThresholdJoy Williams's stories, especially when read collectively, challenge the plausible and demand a reader's participation, a leap of faith....JERUSHA JOY EMERSONFICTIONLITERARY FICTION
Vladimir Nabokov, American VagabondVladimir Nabokov wasn’t born in the USA — and that made his take on America important....BORIS DRALYUKLITERARY CRITICISMLITERARY FICTION
The Past Is UselessNot only in interviews but in the novels themselves, Knausgaard has proven his own best critic....BEN PARKERLITERARY FICTION
Find this, Americans, and get it into your bones— The Dying Grass and other Dreams of William T. Vollmann...NICK HOLDSTOCKFICTIONLITERARY FICTION
Manifold DestinyVollmann wishes for a release from ahistoricism that deprives Americans of the perspective needed to grapple capably with problems arising in the present....CHRISTOPHER K. COFFMANFICTIONLITERARY FICTION
What Rubbish They PublishThe Prank proves Anton Chekhov could write hilarious stories from an early age....BOB BLAISDELLFICTIONLITERARY FICTION
Dancing in the AirPerhaps an essential thing Kundera's late style reveals is that the senile sublime has lurked in his prose all along....JENNY HENDRIXLITERARY FICTION
“Siphoning Away the Warmth”: On Jim Shepard’s Radical Empathy"The Book of Aron" is a book about annihilation, and the human spirit that somehow lives on, in slivers and cracks....NICHOLAS MIRIELLOFICTIONLITERARY FICTION
A Force That Could Not Be RestrainedElizabeth Berg's voluptuous new novel, "The Dream Lover," deftly illuminates the interior life of French Romantic writer George Sand....JILL BIALOSKYLITERARY FICTION
Humor Is VengeanceWhere satire is an act of lifting the veil to expose the truth, in "The Sellout" Paul Beatty lifts the veil over race in America to find several contradictory truths....DOTUN AKINTOYELITERARY FICTION
I Dare Not: The Muted Style of Writer in Exile Ha JinAs a new generation of Chinese writer-exiles settles in the West, we wonder whether Jin’s flat, alienating style will come to be regarded as a kind of artifact, a self-preserving fossil of the trauma generated by those who witnessed the mixture of real and manufactured emotion that fueled a collective mania....ALBERT WU, MICHELLE KUOFICTIONLITERARY FICTION
Carnage Hill, or Frank Bascombe’s Late YearsMaybe a good life is just living long enough to figure out some essential truth....TOD GOLDBERGFICTIONLITERARY FICTION
Inadvertent CrueltyIn 'Nora Webster', Colm Tóibín Reexplores Childhood Abandonment ...DANIEL PEARCEFICTIONLITERARY FICTION
Stream of Pre-ConsciousnessEimear McBride felt that a part of life wasn’t being expressed through straightforward language....SUSAN MCCALLUM-SMITHLITERARY FICTION
No Bible Without the DevilAs in the best speculative fiction, the allegory of Goodhouse is complex and doesn’t map cleanly onto a single set of ideas....CARMEN MARIA MACHADOLITERARY FICTION