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Browse our essays and reviews on literature.
AI-generated novels are here, but they hardly spell the end of fiction.
Lionel Trilling crystallizes the cynical Cold War liberalism that sacrificed idealism for self-restraint.
The novel Kindred reminds us—emphatically, gruesomely—that white supremacy is us too.
In her scholarship, mentoring, and activism, Farah Jasmine Griffin brings a praxis of radical love to an unequal academy.
László Krasznahorkai’s latest novel reflects on the power of the surveillance state through the perspective of a librarian who wishes to lock up all books.
In her new book, Danish poet Olga Ravn writes with open love, pity, and compassion for her strange yet familiar creations.
A new book offers a compelling, if imperfect, account of the bad feelings with which trans people often struggle.
Why groundbreaking queer studies scholar Leo Bersani rejected the word “queer.”
Marlon James discusses writing realistic Black characters, being inspired by African folktales, and why we don’t have to let go of the world of make-believe to tell serious stories.
A recent government report gave UFOs a rebrand, but so many basic questions remain unanswered.
Newly translated into English, Minae Mizumura’s An I-Novel is a vivid portrait of immigrant displacement and the ironies of our global cultural ecosystem.
Simone de Beauvoir’s relationship with her readers was a mutually demanding collaboration.
Michel Houellebecq’s Islamophobia and chauvinism have made him a favorite intellectual of right extremists. So why does he appeal to so many on the left as well?
The Florentine humanist’s description of the Black Death in the Decameron remains one of the most thoughtful accounts of a society living under a pandemic.
Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness movingly depicts the vulnerabilities of queer desire, but it also continues a long tradition of exoticizing Eastern European sexuality.
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