Fiction

Browse our essays and reviews on fiction.

A Moral Fiction

Reading John Champlin Gardner.

  • Charles Johnson

Native Speaker

An Arab citizen of Israel and a native speaker of Palestinian Arabic, Sayed Kashua writes in Hebrew.

  • Laila Lalami

New England Stories

 What sort of stories do New Englanders tell?

  • G.C. Waldrep

Narayan Days

Rereading the master.

  • Jhumpa Lahiri

Bridge Building

On writing Brookland.

  • Emily Barton

Name Calling

Colson Whitehead's Apex Hides the Hurt.

  • Andrée Greene

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The Dreamlife of Rupert Thomson

"Whenever I start a new book I have nightmares. Night after night."

  • James Hynes

Ian McEwan’s Family Values

 A once-in-a-generation writer.

  • Roger Boylan

A Cartoon World

Daniel Clowes’s “comic-strip novel” Ice Haven.

  • Ken Parille

Other People’s Grief

Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days.

  • Jan Clausen

An American Prophet

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead.

  • M.K. Chakrabarti

Intramuros

Boston Review’s 12th Annual Short-Story Contest winner.

  • Lisa Chipongian

The Mark of Exile

An excerpt from The Cigar Roller. 

  • Pablo Medina

New Jews from the Old Country

A new wave of immigrant fiction.

  • Val Vinokur

Longing for God

Writing in Mississippi.

  • Darcey Steinke

Who Owns Bruno Schulz?

Poland stumbles over its Jewish past.

  • Benjamin Paloff

The Uses Of Fantasy

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

  • Jennifer Howard

The Devil and Henry Dumas

A lost voice of the Black Arts Movement.

  • Scott Saul

The Happy Place

On Walt Kelly’s Pogo.

  • John Crowley

American Legacy

On writing The Vagabonds.

  • Nicholas Delbanco

Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn

Reading Harvey Swados.

  • Grace Paley

The Secret Lives of Men

Pat Barker's ambitious project.

  • James Hynes

The Lost Ones

John Banville's existentialist novels.

  • Roger Boylan

A Lunatic Faith

Writing an epistolary novel. 

  • Elisabeth Robinson
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