Simone de Beauvoir, 1952 © Gisèle Freund/Photo Researchers History/Getty Images Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex (1949), in which she famously asserts that “one is not born, but…

Read more

On Roger Deakin’s indelible swims

Read more

“Boy with June Bug, Fort Scott, Kansas, 1963,” by Gordon Parks © The Gordon Parks Foundation In the season of picnics, hikes, and naps in the shade, Lucy Jones’s impassioned…

Read more

Jon Fosse makes the novel new

Read more

“Woman and Lilies,” by Jo Ann Callis © The artist. Courtesy ROSEGALLERY, Santa Monica, California In literature and film, something happens when women hit forty, or nowadays perhaps forty-five: the…

Read more

On Jon Meacham

Read more

Clockwise from top left: “Narrative of Sojourner Truth (title page), 1850, Rubenstein Library, Duke University”; “Watch, Larkin Franklin Sr., Eatonville Historic Preservation”; “The Works of Robert Burns, First Book Purchased…

Read more

A poet’s battle against Russian nationalism

Read more

On a forgotten genius of American music

Read more

Plane Grid, by Kim Frohsin © The artist. Courtesy Andra Norris Gallery, Burlingame, California “I am someone who can live (within reason) anywhere,” writes Aminatta Forna in her new book…

Read more

The new internet novels

Read more

On the secret of Faulkner's literary form

Read more

“Asthand,” by Nina Röder, from Bath in Brilliant Green, which was published in 2018 by Kehrer Verlag © The artist. Courtesy Galerie Burster, Berlin A surprising number of novelists are…

Read more

The history of the black church

Read more

Allan Gurganus’s Southern utopias

Read more

Naître à soi, by Elladj Lincy Deloumeaux © The artist. Courtesy Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Paris In The Year of Living Dangerously, the actress Linda Hunt puts on an unforgettable performance…

Read more

Philip Roth reviews his own biographer

Read more

Mountains in the Snow, by Erich Heckel © akg-images/Artists Rights Society, New York City Philippe Sands’s remarkable 2016 book, East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against…

Read more

A science-fiction pioneer finds posthumous fame

Read more

Helen Frankenthaler’s earthbound genius

Read more

Lovers and Time, by Alex Kanevsky © The artist. Courtesy Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco Danielle McLaughlin’s debut novel, The Art of Falling (Random House, $28), recounts a tumultuous season…

Read more

The languid pleasures of Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Read more

Tove Ditlevsen’s relentless clarity

Read more

“Modena, 1973,” by Luigi Ghirri, from The Map and the Territory, which was published in 2018 by MACK © The artist. Courtesy MACK It has been oddly comforting these past…

Read more

The story of character

Read more

On Alfred Hayes

Read more

Blick auf den Tiergarten mit weißen Kugeln (Parkbild), by Max Beckmann © akg-images When we try to get at a work of art, words of criticism fail worse than anything—they…

Read more

The difficult pleasures of William Gaddis

Read more