On the morning of my friend’s funeral, my period arrived two weeks early and with a sudden force that ruined the black clothing I’d brought and the rickety chair I…

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The gospel according to John (and Karen)

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America’s new poetry of place

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There are no men in the densely civilized galaxy of Samuel R. Delany’s 1984 novel Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Everybody—whether human or extraterrestrial, and on all but…

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Ben Lerner changes perspective

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On Henrik Ibsen

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“Not a great writer, though a pleasant one” was Vladimir Nabokov’s verdict on Ivan Turgenev, the first Russian novelist to make an impact abroad. Nabokov—­who once complained about Henry James’s…

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Sex, violence, and the crime that defined modern Italy

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Should we miss Richard Holbrooke?

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In the lofty Polish hamlet of Luftzug, the skies are low, the winters harsh, and the cell signal perpetually uncertain of its nationality. The highlight of the social calendar is…

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Rediscovering a forgotten Chicago writer

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On the comforts of Simenon’s famed detective

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Discussed in this essay: Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark, by Cecelia Watson. Ecco. 224 pages. $19.99. Four Men Shaking: Searching for Sanity with Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer,…

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A twentieth-century Tolstoy and his forgotten novel

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On the Shining Path

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If there has ever been a historical moment apt to foster optimism of the intellect, right now would not appear to be it. So it’s heartening to see how much…

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Lore Segal reinvents the immigrant novel

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On Abbas Kiarostami

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Discussed in this essay: Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Penguin Press. 320 pages. $30. Humour, by Terry Eagleton. Yale University Press.…

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Did climate change create modern civilization?

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On a new history of Polynesia

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In “Shrink,” a short piece from her 1993 book Have a Nice Day: From the Balkan War to the American Dream, the Croatian writer Dubravka Ugrešic recounts, or imagines, trying…

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On Thomas Merton, fifty years after his death

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Christos Ikonomou’s modern tragedies

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Ten years ago, a week after his sixtieth birthday, and six months after his first appointment with an oncologist, my father died. That afternoon, I went to my parents’ bedroom…

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Spain’s answer to Knausgaard arrives in English

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Decoding the life and art of Cy Twombly

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How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, by Daniel Immerwahr. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 528 pages. $30. Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli. Knopf. 400 pages. $27.95. Territory…

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