Literature Archives - Page 3 of 13

Democracy

A Dystopian Novel for Our Times

What being tyrannized tastes like

May 15, 2025 • by Susan Yelavich

On one level, the premise of Prophet Song (Oneworld, 2023), the recent Booker-winning novel by the Irish writer Paul Lynch, is simple enough: It’s about the existential dilemmas a mother faces in an authoritarian state. But on every other level, Prophet Song exceeds the expectations of a dystopian tale. Instead ...

Activism

Leo Tolstoy Salutes the Student Movement in Russia

When Russian students decided to stop studying at the institutions where they get educated by the whip

May 15, 2025 • by Inessa Medzhibovskaya and Leo Tolstoy

Some lines written very long ago seem to have been written for the current moment. At the University of St. Petersburg in the spring of 1899, students protested the government’s policies and their pressure on university administration. Upon learning about student unrest and being urged by student delegates who were ...

Leo Tolstoy Salutes the Student Movement in Russia

Literature

Whitman, Spiritual Decay, and the Last Light of American Faith

In dark times, the sacred work is not to flee but to testify

May 14, 2025 • by Yahia Lababidi

I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the ...

Whitman, Spiritual Decay, and the Last Light of American Faith

Interviews

Mining Memories for Fiction

May 13, 2025 • by Gina Chung and Mikayla Emerson

Author Gina Chung finds herself interrogating real life through fiction—so much so that she curated a collection before realizing the stories were obsessed with the same things. She’s the author of Sea Change (Vintage Books, 2023) and most recently Green Frog (Vintage Books, 2024), the winner of the 2025 O. ...

Literature

Rabbit Heart

An excerpt from Gina Chung’s short story collection, Green Frog

May 13, 2025 • by Gina Chung

When I am eight years old, I am a girl who would rather hide than seek, a girl who fears bullies and teachers and loud noises and speaking in public and God. I am overweight for my age group, friendless, and known for thick glasses and dark overalls, which I ...

Literature

Blasphemy Is a Victimless Crime

In the 2025 William Phillips Lecture, Salman Rushdie discusses freedom, defiance, fame, and the lesson of the ham sandwich

April 15, 2025 • by Luis Jaramillo and Salman Rushdie

In March, acclaimed author Salman Rushdie visited The New School to deliver the 2025 William Phillips Lecture, a talk titled “Blasphemy Is a Victimless Crime.” Rushdie, the author of 15 novels, including the Booker Prize–winning Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses, and nonfiction books including, most recently, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, ...

Art & Design

Rethinking Empathy

A review of Imperfect Solidarities by Aruna D’Souza

March 4, 2025 • by Elide Vincenti

A deceptively simple question animates Imperfect Solidarities (Floating Opera Press, 2024), a short new book by writer and art critic Aruna D’Souza: “What would it mean if our politics were based not on our ability to empathize with people whose experiences are distant from our own, but on our willingness ...

Literature

Augusto Monterroso’s The Rest Is Silence

Under the author’s microscope, the affectations of the literati come into focus

February 20, 2025 • by Madeleine Adams

It’s difficult to write about The Rest Is Silence (trans. from the Spanish by Aaron Kerner, New York Review Books, 2024) without sounding like Eduardo Torres, the puffed-up literary critic and protagonist of Augusto Monterroso’s metatextual satire—but I will do my best. The novel, originally published in 1978, is the ...

Augusto Monterroso’s The Rest Is Silence

Literature

Danzy Senna’s Colored Television Isn’t So Funny

And maybe that’s the point

February 12, 2025 • by Marisol Aveline Delarosa

I was prepared to laugh my way through Danzy Senna’s sixth novel, Colored Television (Riverhead, 2024), after reading review after review touting the book as a comedy. In this period of intense political and social divisiveness and strife, I hoped a fun satire (I like ridicule!) about a biracial (I’m ...

Danzy Senna’s Colored Television Isn’t So Funny

Literature

When Is It Time to Leave?

In her new novel, Overstaying, Ariane Koch plays with the comforts of home

January 30, 2025 • by Mary Karmelek

The places we’ve lived are sites of memory, places we can revisit time and again without using a door. I’ve often gone back and visited the home I grew up in, though I haven’t set foot inside since my family left it three decades ago. Instead, I can feel the ...

Interviews

The Powerful Convergence of Past, Present, and Future in Catherine Texier’s Latest Novel

An interview about After David

January 23, 2025 • by Hannah McIntyre and Catherine Texier

An older woman and a younger man—a trope that operates on elements of fantasy and plays with conventional expectations. The dynamic between an older woman and a younger man is complex; it's looked down upon, and it never gets tiresome. In After David (ITNA Press, 2024), Catherine Texier explores these themes ...

The Powerful Convergence of Past, Present, and Future in Catherine Texier’s Latest Novel

Kinships

The Witches of El Paso

An excerpt from a new novel on the supernatural power of family

December 11, 2024 • by Luis Jaramillo

On the bridge to Juárez, Marta peers down at the Rio Grande trickling along its concrete ditch. The air is heavy with diesel exhaust. People walk across the bridge carrying bright blue and red plastic bags, pushing granny carts toward El Paso. Marta thinks back to when she was a girl, ...