Mircea Cărtărescu Stares Down the Abyss
The Romanian writer Mircea Cărtărescu boasts a long, international-award-winning bibliography of poetry and prose. Yet in his fiction, he often speaks through narrators hostile to publication and recognition.
Winter 2024
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The Post-American Surreal
In Bliss Montage, Ling Ma seeks to re-enchant a world whose catastrophes have grown monotonously real.
The Zealot
Jonathan Franzen’s Midwestern broods, like horsemen of the apocalypse, ride through his books heralding various endings: of eras, of bygone mores, of novels themselves.
Norwegian Mood
Dag Solstad is widely considered Norway’s most accomplished living writer, in part because of how his writing has intertwined with the fortunes of the Norwegian left.
So Much Winning
“I first notice it a few weeks after the election. The swastika has been spray-painted onto the curb kitty-corner from my parents’ house…”
A short story.
Suicide, Watch
“Jilly determined to wait at least four hours before checking the status of her farewell post so she wouldn’t look desperate, but then she remembered that she didn’t have long left. . . .” A short story.
Parliament Square 
An excerpt from Parliament Square, first staged at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester in October 2017.
The Flagellates
“While it is not within my power to outright abolish the standard sentence of fifteen corrective lashes, I can adjust how they are distributed.” A satire about prison conditions in Eritrea.
Fault Lines
“He was late for all the same reasons he was late each day, he was running for all the same reasons he ran each day. . .”
A short story.
This Is What We Must Do
Five poems by the late American writer and activist Grace Paley.
Finding Miss Burma
An excerpt from the new novel Miss Burma.
Booked: The Empathy of Fiction, with Viet Thanh Nguyen
Novelist and critic Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his new book of short stories, The Refugees, and how the art of fiction illuminates politics.
Kinetic Joy
In Zadie Smith’s Swing Time, a young woman explores her racial identity through a love of dance—and finds a different kind of history, one that is barely written down.
The Sobbing School: Three Poems
Three poems from Joshua Bennett’s The Sobbing School.
War Porn
whenever possible, you should avoid kill zones such as streets, alleys, and parks Driving the edge of Sadr City through bumper-to-bumper afternoon jam, I heard Lieutenant Krauss behind me yell, “Weapon on the left.” “What, where?” the BC shouted. …
