THEFT, by Abdulrazak Gurnah In 1964, when Abdulrazak Gurnah was a teenager in Zanzibar — an archipelago off the coast of East Africa that had been an Omani sultanate for centuries, and is now part of Tanzania — African revolutionaries overthrew the Arab-led constitutional monarchy, forcing Gurnah and his family to flee the violence for … Read more
ABUNDANCE, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson In 1833, John Adolphus Etzler, a German engineer who immigrated to Pittsburgh, announced that earthly paradise was suddenly in reach. Economic growth and modern technology were changing everything. Coal might run out, but humanity would harness wind, tidal and solar power. A trillion or more people could call … Read more
Last year, Everett published “James,” his reimagining of the American classic “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” told through the voice of Mark Twain’s enslaved Black character Jim. In the strictest sense, “James” employs parody and pastiche, drawing broadly from Twain’s plot and characters but endowing its first-person narrator with the wit and eloquence that his … Read more
CHANGING MY MIND, by Julian Barnes In an essay from his collection “The Dyer’s Hand,” W.H. Auden describes his personal Eden: an “absolute monarchy, elected for life by lot,” a place without automobiles, airplanes, newspapers, movies, radio or television, whose economy depends on lead mining, coal mining, chemical factories and sheep farming and whose public … Read more
FIRSTBORN: A Memoir, by Lauren Christensen There are two fierce, fragile fighters in “Firstborn,” Lauren Christensen’s touching memoir about the life and death of her tiny daughter, Simone, who was stillborn 22 weeks into Christensen’s pregnancy. The great accomplishment of this book is that I feel I have gotten to know and care for both … Read more
STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE, by Kristen Arnett Some people don’t like clowns. I happen to have married one. My husband was a birthday clown for about four years in the early 2000s, a history that endeared me to the premise of Kristen Arnett’s latest, “Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One.” Set … Read more
by Gillian McAllister What would you do if your beloved, thoughtful husband inexplicably grabbed a gun, took some strangers hostage in a warehouse and instigated a tense standoff with the police? “Tell my wife that I love her,” the husband, Luke, tells a police negotiator before shooting two of the hostages to death and escaping … Read more
HUNCHBACK, by Saou Ichikawa; translated by Polly Barton Shaka Izawa, the narrator of the Japanese author Saou Ichikawa’s slim and formidable debut novel, “Hunchback,” writes porn from her room in the group care facility where she has lived since she was 14. Like the author, she suffers from myotubular myopathy, a rare genetic disorder that … Read more
Randall K. Wilson, the author of “A Place Called Yellowstone: The Epic History of the World’s First National Park,” has been named the winner of the New York Historical’s 2025 Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize, which is given annually for the best work of American history or biography. In a news release, the historical … Read more
