The Best Kind of Book Adaptation
A new opera based on George Saunders’s novel Lincoln in the Bardo makes some fantastically shocking choices.
Talya Zax
Talya Zax is a senior editor at The Atlantic.
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Karen Almond / Met Opera The Real Selling Point of Romantasy
The best-selling genre is more than just smut.
Heritage Fine Art / Getty What Annie Dillard Left Out
Dillard understood that even in suburban landscapes, nature could be transcendent—but human relationships are largely absent from her writing.
Erica Yoon / Roanoke Times / Getty The Most American Form of Theater
A new play upends the contemporary notion that public debate needs to be a blood sport.
Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic What the U.S. Could Learn From an Irish Theater
For 100 years, Ireland’s Abbey Theatre has shown that a publicly funded troupe can deliver cultural riches and hard truths.
Illustration by Anna Ruch / The Atlantic. Sources: Bettmann / Getty; Elinor Darwin. Literature’s Enduring Obsession With Strange Sisters
In Xenobe Purvis’s novel, a brood of odd siblings illuminates the fears of their fellow villagers.
Photograph by Pia Guilmoth The Most Infamous Narcissist in Literary History Gets a Smartphone
A new stage production of The Picture of Dorian Gray conveys the cost of posturing online.
Illustration by Jonelle Afurong / The Atlantic. Source: Marc Brenner. Two Murder Mysteries’ Surprising Window Into Human Genius
Why novelists love to imagine great historical figures as detectives
Illustration by Matt Chase The Sense That Most Defines a Culture
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s Taiwan Travelogue shows how colonization shapes a country’s culinary landscape.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Ben Martin / Getty; Universal Images Group / Getty. When Wellness Can’t Bring Happiness
A provocative 1970s novel reads like a contemporary cry for freedom from the expectations of others.
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.
