Category Archives: Literature
Books: Kirkus Reviews – September 15, 2022 Issue
An Athlete and Activist Shares His Story With Kids
Here is the truly amazing thing that few people besides Tommie Smith remember about his gold medal–winning 200-meter run in the 1968 Olympics: He broke the world record in just under 20 seconds on one good leg.
‘The Rushdie Affair,’ Back in the News
As we were editing our Sept. 15 issue in mid-August, news broke that author Salman Rushdie had been attacked at a lecture in western New York state. The story sent shock waves through the literary community—a stark reminder that violence can lurk in the corners of literary debate. Rushdie is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction and is most celebrated for his 1981 novel, Midnight’s Children, a kaleidoscopic epic of Indian life after independence that won the Booker Prize as well as two subsequent honors, the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and the Best of the Booker in 2008.
Covers: New York Review Of Books – October 6, 2022

The October 6 issue is online now, with Bill McKibben on the climate refugee crisis, Hermione Lee on Joseph Roth’s violently mixed feelings, Linda Greenhouse on Justice Breyer’s most powerful dissent, Jerome Groopman on diabetes, Leslie T. Chang on narrative nonfiction in China, Ange Mlinko on H.D., David S. Reynolds on séances in the Lincoln White House, Verlyn Klinkenborg on the Beach Boys’ moment in the sun, Erin Maglaque on the pope’s astronomer, Mark Danner on the long, slow Trump coup, a poem by Vona Groarke, and much more.
Where Will We Live?
Three books on the movement, of both humans and wildlife, spurred by climate change illustrate the magnitude of the challenge before us.
Nowhere Left to Go: How Climate Change Is Driving Species to the Ends of the Earth – by Benjamin von Brackel, translated from the German by Ayça Türkoğlu
Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World – by Gaia Vince
Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism – by Harsha Walia
Poet of the Dispossessed
Joseph Roth was unwavering in his passion for the vanished Austro-Hungarian Empire, which inspired his greatest novel, his hatred of nationalism, and his prophetic and courageous loathing for the Nazis. About everything else, as a new biography shows, he had violently mixed feelings.
Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth – by Keiron Pim
Preview: Times Literary Supplement – Sept 16, 2022
This week’s @TheTLS , featuring @motionandrew, Claire Lowdon and Jane Ridley on Elizabeth II; @MirandaFrance1 on motherhood; @lindseyhilsum on the US’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan; @15thcgossipgirl on sex in the Middle Ages – and more.
Preview: London Review Of Books – Sept 22, 2022
Books: The New York Times Book Review – Sept 11, 2022

9 Books to Read About Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth, famously reticent during her decades in the public eye, was a source of fascination for many. These books offer a deeper understanding of her life, family and world.
Jennifer Egan and the Goon Squad
Ling Ma’s Surreal Subversions
A Global History of Gender, in All Its Varieties
Kit Heyam’s “Before We Were Trans” spans continents and millenniums to prove that where there is humanity, there is nonconformity.
By MEREDITH TALUSAN
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 19, 2022

Malika Favre’s “Figurehead”
Queen Elizabeth II’s seven-decade reign has come to an end.
By Françoise Mouly, Art by Malika Favre
Queen Elizabeth II died on Thursday, at the age of ninety-six. During her seventy-year-long reign, the Queen presided over the dissolution of the British Empire. She was there for the creation of the European Union—and for Brexit. She was there for Churchill, for Thatcher, and, just last Tuesday, she was there to shake hands with the incoming Conservative Prime Minister, Liz Truss. On the cover of the September 19th issue, the artist Malika Favre, who lived in London for sixteen years, captures the indelible association between Britain and its longtime monarch.
Literary Previews: The Paris Review – Fall 2022
The Paris Review Fall 2022 issue—featuring interviews with Helen Garner and Terrance Hayes, fiction by Sam Pink @sampinkisalive and Nancy Lemann, poetry by Ben Lerner, Stephen Ira @supermattachine, and Diane Seuss @dlseuss art by Louise Lawler, and more.
Previews: BOOKFORUM Magazine – Sep/Oct 2022
Bookforum Magazine – SEP/OCT/NOV 2022
Jane’s World
MOIRA DONEGAN RECONSIDERS A PRE-ROE ABORTION SERVICE IN A POST-ROE ERA
Meditations in an Emergency
LUCY SANTE ON EMMANUEL CARRÈRE’S BOOK OF MEDITATION AND MENTAL BREAKDOWN
Liz Kid
SARAH JAFFE interviews Namwali Serpell
CRITICS AND NOVELISTS on what they’ve been reading
BOOKFORUM CONTRIBUTORS on this season’s notable art books
ERIN SOMERS on fangirls
Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Sept 12, 2022

George Balanchine’s Soviet Reckoning
New York City Ballet’s 1962 tour of the U.S.S.R. forced the great choreographer to confront the regime he’d fled and the people he’d left behind.
John Cuneo’s “Top Dog”
The artist discusses canine stars, his first trip abroad, and keeping a sense of the spontaneous in his work.

