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Five Great Books About Beirut
Rawi Hage’s Beirut Hellfire Society is published this month. He shares five books about Beirut. Dear Mr. Kawabata by Rachid Al-Daif The novel takes place during the early period of the Lebanese...
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Five Great Novels of Revolution
Carolina De Robertis’ Cantoras is published today. She shares five great novels of revolution. Another Country by James Baldwin In this astounding, keenly lyrical novel, Baldwin probes the...
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Five Texts That Changed My Students Forever
Jesse Ball’s The Divers’ Game is published today. He shares five texts he has personally observed change a student forever upon first reading. “The Copper Look” from The Man in the Black Coat by Daniil...
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Five Great Books of Spiritual Poetry
Brad Gooch’s Rumi: Unseen Poems, edited and translated with Maryam Mortaz, is published this month. He shares five books of spiritual poetry. The Conference of the Birds by Farid Attar (trans....
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Five Great Magical Realist Novels
Alan Lightman’s Three Flames is published this month. He shares five of his favorite novels showcasing surrealism and magic realism. The Trial by Franz Kafka This novel brilliantly conveys the...
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Five Books that Made Me a Feminist
Alix Kates Shulman’s classic Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen is being reissued this month. She shares five books that made her a feminist. Fifty years ago, notes Alix Kates Shulman, the prospects for women...
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Five Great Books About Criticism
Daniel Mendelsohn’s Ecstasy and Terror is published today. He shares five books about criticism. The Critic As Artist by Oscar Wilde (1891) This extended essay of 1891 can be thought of as the...
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Five Great American Social Crime Novels
Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay is publishing today. She shares five American social crime novels. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler Chandler certainly had his blind spots, but he knew how to use...
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Five Great Nonfiction Books With Metanarratives
Jeannie Vanasco’s Things We Didn’t Talk about When I Was a Girl is published this month. She shares five books with metanarratives. Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose In this essay...
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Five Tales of Suspense and Horror That Influence Benjamin Percy’s Work
Benjamin Percy’s Suicide Woods is published this month. He shares five tales of suspense and horror that influence his work. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Like so many others, I kneel at the altar—built...
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Five NYC-Set Novels That Became NYC-Set Films
Christian Blauvelt’s Cinematic Cities: New York is published today. He shares five NYC-set novels that became NYC-set films. Washington Square by Henry James A slim volume for James but packed with...
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Five Books that Influenced My Writing Life
Deirdre Bair’s Parisian Lives is published today. She shares five books that influenced her writing life. Ulysses by James Joyce It might seem strange for a biographer to choose a novel, but I have...
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Five Books that Deal with Nature in a Sensual Way
Nina MacLaughlin’s Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung is published today. She shares five books that deal with nature in a sensual way. INRI by Raúl Zurita, translated by William Rowe “My attempt has been to...
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Alan Furst’s Interwar Gems
Alan Furst’s Under Occupation is published today. He shares five gems of the interwar period. Between Meals by A.J. Liebling A lovely book about food and wine and Paris in the 1920s by a writer...
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5 Novels in Translation About Political Transformations
Free Day by Inès Cagnati, translated by Liesl Schillinger, is published today. Schillinger shares five books that give windows onto important political transformations. The Time Regulation...
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Five Great Books About Visionary Youth
Lars Iyer’s Nietzsche and the Burbs is published this month. He shares five books about visionary youth. Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz (Yale University Press, 2012, originally published, Poland,...
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Five Masterpieces of Historical Fiction
Jeffrey Colvin’s Africaville is published this month. He shares five books that offer a master class in historical fiction, books that inspired him over the nearly twenty-year period he worked on...
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Five Books that Invoke Invisibility
Jerome Charyn’s Cesare: A Novel of War-Torn Berlin is published today. He shares five books that invoke invisibility, noting, “Cesare is a somnambulist, a secret agent who works for the Abwehr,...
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Five Books of Wild California
Crissy Van Meter’s Creatures is published this month. She shares five books about wild California. The Yosemite by John Muir Poetic and precise, this book is about the most beautiful place on...
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Five Great Works of Absurdist Fiction
Joanna Kavenna’s Zed is published this month. She shares five works of absurdist fiction, noting that this work “is based on the tragi-comic tension between our mysterious and finite existence and...
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