Dorothea Angola, Shorto tells us, arrived in New Amsterdam enslaved, possibly in 1627. She married and had children, and in 1644, her husband petitioned the Dutch West India Company for the couple’s freedom, which was granted. Soon after, they were given a six-acre tract to farm in what would become Greenwich Village. But their children … Read more
“To enter into high society,” Benjamin Disraeli wrote, “a man must either have blood, a million or a genius.” As soon as he was able to convert his own genius into power and fortune, the future British prime minister — who’d been raised by Sephardic Jews in London — bought Hughenden Manor, a “gentleman’s residence” … Read more
Any discussion of the New York 1920s avant-garde must include Van Vechten — music critic, drama critic, photographer, novelist, Florine Stettheimer subject, and friend and editor to Gertrude Stein, among many, many other things. Van Vechten is frequently described as a champion of the Harlem Renaissance and is often credited with sparking interest among white … Read more
RAISING HARE: A Memoir, by Chloe Dalton During the lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic, the internet was the lifeline to work, school, entertainment and social activity for many white-collar workers. Yet, when her router cable was severed, Chloe Dalton felt not panic, but “a rare moment of exasperation” with the toothy perpetrator — the brown … Read more
To walk into Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s stately brick home outside Baltimore is to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that small children live there. It’s not that the kitchen floor is a Lego minefield or that the double staircase is lined with low-hanging fingerprints — quite the opposite. It’s that the house rings with … Read more
WILD DARK SHORE, by Charlotte McConaghy Charlotte McConaghy’s third novel, “Wild Dark Shore,” opens vividly, with a shipwrecked woman named Rowan washing up on Shearwater, a remote island off the coast of Antarctica. She is nursed to health by the island’s caretakers — Dominic Salt and his children, Raff, Fen and Orly, the last inhabitants … Read more
Antonine Maillet, a Canadian writer who shaped a new literary language for an isolated French-speaking minority, becoming the first non-European to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, died on Feb. 17 at her home in Montreal, on a street named after her. She was 95. Her death was confirmed by her publisher, Leméac. In novels, … Read more
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | How to Listen Samantha Harvey’s novel “Orbital,” which won the Booker Prize last year, has a tight, poetic frame: We follow one day in the lives of six people working on a space station above Earth, orbiting the planet 16 times every 24 hours. But this is not a … Read more
Isabelle Huppert stands upstage center, demurely holding her hands in front of her waist, and starts to speak. She is motionless and in silhouette so we don’t see her mouth, creating a sense of dislocation as to where the words we hear are actually coming from. And as we quickly discover, the Robert Wilson production … Read more
By Daisy Pearce Daisy Pearce’s latest, SOMETHING IN THE WALLS (Minotaur Books, 291 pp., $28), follows Mina, a young woman taking big steps forward in her life. She’s just graduated from college with a degree in psychology and a specialization in child clinical work, and she’s about to get married. But things are far from … Read more