The Crisis That Novelists Can’t Handle
Amitav Ghosh believes that climate change requires rethinking the novel. His new work of fiction fails that standard.
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Illustration by Vartika Sharma. Sources: Sean Gladwell / Getty; Eva Millan Photography / Getty. A Novel About Women Who Trade One Kind of Captivity for Another
In Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things, a group of captive women discover who they might become beyond the control of men.
Illustration by Lore Mondragon A Bizarre, Challenging Book More People Should Read
The true pleasure of literature can be found in demanding works such as Your Name Here, by Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff.
Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic The Riot That Foretold an Unstable Future
In his newest book, Joe Sacco worries about what political violence might lead to.
Courtesy of Metropolitan Books A Novel That Reimagines the Meaning of Outer Space
In Pip Adam’s extraordinary, humane book Audition, the stars are both a dystopian place and a site of uncharted possibility.
Photo-illustration by Jonelle Afurong / The Atlantic. Sources: Jose A. Bernat Bacete / Getty; baona / Getty. A Country Imperfectly Pulling Itself Together
Wildcat Dome’s characters can’t escape the calamities that marked their lives—and their country’s history.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: The Royal Geographical Society / Eric Laforgue / Digital Globe / Getty. A Holocaust Novel Confronts Fiction’s Limits
Lily Tuck’s attempt to bring to life a victim of the atrocity turns her into a prosecutor, not a novelist.
Illustration by Hokyoung Kim Eight Books That Will Lead You Down a Rabbit Hole
Making any kind of art can be an obsessive pursuit, but literature is uniquely suited to depicting monomania.
The Atlantic
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