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From Stephen Elliott
In The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov, Paul Russell imagines the life of the not-famous Nabokov and delivers a novel that lives outside the legacy. …more
James Vance Marshall’s 1959 book Walkabout tells a unique story of two stranded children who are rescued from the Australian outback by another young boy on a wilderness quest. …more
Emily Kendal Frey’s compact, laconic poems from her first collection, The Grief Performance, outwit, outlast, and, eponymously, outperform not only death, but failure, ennui, and despair.
Joseph Masheck’s lively new essay collection Texts on (Texts on) Art traces artistic influences from unexpected corners. …more
Tania James’s new short story collection, Aerogrammes, is infused with family discord, ethnic discrimination, and psychological trauma wrought from multicultural families in America and England. …more
The first English translation of Daniel Sada, Almost Never is a bright introduction of this Spanish star who brings humor and unmatched style to the ordinary. …more
Voices of the Rainbow: Contemporary Poetry by Native Americans is a reissue of an anthology first published in 1975. Sacred Clowns won’t jump off the pages, but you will be reminded whose land you may be parked on—if you arrived after Columbus, that is.
Catherine Chung’s first novel, Forgotten Country, is a captivating flux of family history and cultural folklore that examines identity, immigration, and familial obligations in the face of loss. …more
Set in South Africa, Patrick Flanery’s debut novel Absolution weaves together four stories about the guilt that we all share, and the absolution that we are all seeking. …more
Zona, Geoff Dyer’s extended meditation on Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, meanders through this complex film about avoiding a confrontation with our soul. …more
Howell surprises by not trying to surprise at all…. Once a reader takes these poems on their terms, the poems become really intricate and beautiful.
Terry Bisson’s new novel, Any Day Now, a blend of coming-of-age tropes and alternate history, sweeps us through the turbulent ’60s and imagines a 1968 that both RFK and MLK survived. …more
Elizabeth Ellen’s Fast Machine compiles 94 of the author’s rhythmic, sprawling stories. …more
The promised west in The Oregon Trail IS The Oregon Trail is an amalgam of bootstrap romance, wilderness bordered by suburban sprawl, death, and the ferocity of natural processes.
In this intricately woven short story collection, The Greatest Show, Michael Downs tells the sad long story of crumbling American cities through the lens of a tragic circus fire of 1944. …more
In his new history of the experimental writing movement, Oulipo, Many Subtle Channels, Daniel Levin Becker goes where few have gone. …more
Alex Gilvarry’s debut novel throws us into a complex world of a young Filipino immigrant who is unexpectedly detained by Homeland Security. …more
With dream-like language, Miranda Mellis’s latest book, None of This is Real, gives us a fantastical world with a haunting resemblance to our own. …more
Ana Menendez’s new collection of short fiction, Adios, Happy Homeland, weaves together stories from diverse Cuban voices that all confront the history and lived reality of their conflicted homeland. …more
When it comes to trying to understand people, Richard Posner is an American Sigmund Freud. …more
A Review of Writing in the Dark, by David Grossman
BY BRIAN SCHWARTZ
In the Hebrew language, I am sure, there are several different ways to say “enemy.” I have little grasp of what these words might be. I imagine that there are milder entries …more