The Ghosts of Toni Morrison
In a new study, Namwali Serpell describes how the novelist located the missing stories of Black America.
Book Review
The Poet Laureate of Madness
Why Alfred, Lord Tennyson feels so modern
The Novel as Extended Op-Ed
If anyone could write good fiction about immigration, it would probably be Lionel Shriver. Instead, her latest book goes off the rails.
Deadlier Than Gettysburg
How the cruelty of the Confederacy’s prison camps gave rise to the rules of war
The Moral Cost of Living in an Unequal Society
In his new novel, Daniyal Mueenuddin attempts to bring together the stories of people whose lives rarely intersect in meaningful ways.
A Novel About the Costs of Family Secrets
In Quiara Alegría Hudes’s The White Hot, they hurt the people they’re meant to protect.
A Champion of Modernism, in Literature and Life
Margaret C. Anderson was at the center of a notorious literary-obscenity trial. Then she was forgotten.
Julian Barnes Says Goodbye to the Novel
His fiction has found meaning in life’s gaps and love’s absence.
A New Understanding of Human Beings’ Most Basic Desire
The philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s latest book looks beyond happiness as the goal of a well-lived life.
The New History of Fighting Slavery
What we learn by tracing rebellions from Africa to the Americas