Tag Archives: Fiction

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – JANUARY 9, 2026 PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The Donroe Doctrine’ – Donald Trump stakes his claim to the Western Hemisphere.

Donald Trump consigned the remnants of the rules-based international order to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea as US forces extracted Nicolás Maduro to face trial in the US. With allies and adversaries of Washington still adjusting to last weekend’s audacious assault on Caracas, Trump and his inner circle are thinking about their next steps to secure US interests in what they regard as “our hemisphere”.


Our reporting team, led by Latin American correspondent Tom Phillips, gauges the reaction to Maduro’s abduction on the ground in Caracas and among Venezuela’s closest neighbours, while Dan Sabbagh explains how the US military had planned and executed the operation.

Since the start of the US military buildup and blockade of Venezuela, Trump had claimed that Maduro needed to be “brought to justice” for his alleged role in drug trafficking, which Trump claimed had caused thousands of deaths in the US. But, as international commentators Julian Borger and Nesrine Malik explain, that has proved the thinnest of justifications and already by last Saturday it was clear that Venezuela’s huge oil reserves were uppermost on his mind.

Spotlight | Iran in turmoil
An ailing economy and plummeting exchange rate have prompted the biggest street protests in many years, report Deepa Parent and William Christou

Science | Is de-extinction really possible?
Bringing woolly mammoths and dire wolves back to life captured the public’s imagination last year but, Patrick Greenfield reports, there are questions around what can actually be achieved

Feature | The power and purpose of guilt
Psychologist Chris Moore saw first-hand how powerful and complex an emotion it is, as he explains to Emine Saner

Opinion | Adieu to the French art of lunch
Paul Taylor mourns the demise of a convivial lunch at a bistro serving freshly prepared food and the end of an unpretentious part of working culture

Culture | Is the crisis in masculinty just a joke?
It’s a ridiculous time to be male – and that’s good news for a new genre of social media comedy poking fun at the manosphere, finds Matthew Cantor

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – JANUARY 2, 2026 PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘Payback Time’ – Europe’s very big, very expensive problem with state pensions.

As populations age, the number of younger people entering the workforce is shrinking – and that’s a big problem for “pay as you go” state pension schemes where employees fund the pensions of an expanding cohort of retired people.

Confusingly, a new poll of six European nations reveals how most voters can see this problem and realise their state pensions will soon become unaffordable. But at the same time, they also believe state pensions are too low, and are unwilling to support reforms to them.

Where do governments under increasing pressure from populists go from here? For our first big story of 2026, the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, Jon Henley, reports on a ticking timebomb for the continent’s social contract.

Spotlight | The prospects for peace in Ukraine in 2026
As Russia inches forward on the battlefield and – despite Donald Trump’s optimism – peace talks remain deadlocked, Kyiv’s best hopes of progress may be on the economic and political fronts, writes Dan Sabbagh

Science | How great a threat is AI to the climate?
The datacentres behind artificial intelligence are polluting the natural world – and some experts fear the exponential rise in demand could derail the shift to a clean economy. Ajit Niranjan reports

Feature | Returning to the West Bank after two decades
The former Guardian correspondent Ewen MacAskill used to report frequently from the Palestinian Territory. Twenty years after his last visit, he went back – and was shocked by how much worse it is today

Opinion | Need cheering up after a terrible year? I have just the story for you
A single act of kindness reminded columnist Martin Kettle that, despite so much evidence to the contrary, the better angels of our nature are not necessarily doomed

Culture | The Brit boom
Whether it’s Charli xcx or chicken shops, UK culture is having a moment. Can it be future-proofed from the diluting forces of globalisation? Rachel Aroesti investigates

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS – JANUARY 15, 2026

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features Susan Tallman – Fairness for the Dispossessed; Kevin Power – David Szalay’s Wretched Men; Jeremy Donk – How Erik Satie Freed the Notes…

‘Minimum Victory’

Weary of war and staring down the likelihood of an unjust peace, Ukrainian intellectuals are plotting out a road map for the future. 

East Side Story

Josh Safdie’s new film, starring Timothée Chalamet, is both a character study of monomania and a moving fable of how the American century of table tennis was lost.

L’Affaire Carlson

Concern over antisemitism on the right has split the conservative world in two—and GOP gatekeepers have lost the ability to contain it.

‘They Killed Our People’

More than a century after white mobs in Elaine, Arkansas, murdered hundreds of black sharecroppers in 1919, the massacre’s memory remains contested. 

‘The Ancient and Long-Forgotten Language of Cinematography’

If the movies are dead, why does Bi Gan’s Resurrection feel so alive?

Zyzzyva Magazine – WINTER 2025-2026

ZYZZYVA Magazine: The latest issue features…

Nonfiction

“The Fighters” by Joe Donnelly: on being transplanted as a boy from New Jersey to Ireland, and the grim school days spent at Willow Park primary school in Dublin.

“Fire Watching” by Harmony Holiday: a mediation on Los Angeles, its devastating fires, and finding meaning.

“The Deer” by Raia Small: “I have never killed anyone, so I can say that I don’t understand. But I am getting to know my own cruelties …”

Fiction

“A Long Line of Violence” by Tomas Moniz: A duo travels from the Mission District to Lassen Volcanic National Park to return a rifle to its battleground.

“Plums” by Feroz Rather: A young man steals as much time as he can with his beloved among the orchards and buses of his town in Kashmir.

“Viable” by Suzanne Rivecca: “The person I call in situations like this is Colette, the city government version of me, an abstinent ex-junkie disliked by the mayor, with a soft spot for schizophrenics, a love for lancing abscesses, and zero work/life balance.”

Poetry

Brian Ang, Nica Giromini, Kelly Gray, Michael Kennedy Costa, Kayla Krut, Maw Shein Win, Jared Stanley, and John Yau.

In Conversation

Chris Feliciano Arnold talks to Venezuelan scholar, journalist, and poet Boris Muñoz about literature, authoritarianism, and the importance of cronistas.

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – DECEMBER 12, 2025 PREVIEW

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘Blocked!’ – Why Australia banned kids from social media (and what they think of it)

Millions of teenagers in Australia woke up on Wednesday to find themselves locked out of social media accounts after the government introduced a ban for under-16s – the first of its kind – on the platforms.

Far from being a kneejerk response to a moral panic, it’s a move backed up by detailed investigation into the effects of unfettered online access on children – and one that several other countries are poised to follow. Australian eSafety research found seven in 10 children aged 10 to 15 had encountered content associated with harm online. Three-quarters of those had most recently encountered that – including misogyny, violence, disordered eating and suicide – on a social media platform.

“We are seeking to create some friction [in the] system to protect children where previously there has been close to none … We are treating big tech like the extractive industry it has become,” Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, told an audience earlier this year.

Spotlight | Syria, one year after Assad
While country’s return to global stage has filled many Syrians with pride, domestically old grievances threaten efforts to rebuild the state. William Christou reports from Damascus

Feature | The inside story of the race to create the ultimate AI
In Silicon Valley, rival companies are spending trillions of dollars to reach a goal that could change humanity – or potentially destroy it. Robert Booth reports

Feature | On the trail of London’s snail farming don
Terry Ball – renowned shoe salesman, friend to former mafiosi – has vowed to spend his remaining years finding ways to cheat authorities he feels have cheated him. His greatest ruse? A tax-dodging snail empire. Jim Waterson caught up with him

Opinion | What words are left to describe Trump’s global rampage?
Deadly US boat strikes in the Caribbean are the latest example of a president corrupting both the law and morality, argues Jonathan Freedland

Culture | The best books of 2025
From fiction to food, people to poetry, science to sport: Guardian critics round up the year’s essential reads

THE PARIS REVIEW ———- WINTER 2025/2026

THE PARIS REVIEW : The latest issue features Art of Criticism, Art of Poetry, Prose, Poetry and Art…

Hélène Cixous on the Art of Criticism: “There’s a feminist discourse that women can’t do it all. This is what many women experience, and it’s very difficult. But I am not like that.”

Alice Oswald on the Art of Poetry: “You come at poetry with the momentum of having failed. It’s only when other communication is absolutely impossible that a poem has to exist.”

Prose by Eve Babitz, Marlene Morgan, Alec Niedenthal, Gwendoline Riley, and Elias Rodriques.

Poetry by Millicent Borges Accardi, Monzer Masri, Alice Oswald, Jana Prikryl, and Ed Roberson.

Art by Ali Banisadr, Pippa Garner, Joan Jonas, and Mieko Meguro; cover by Adebunmi Gbadebo.

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS – WINTER 2025-2026

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue of LARB features ‘Security’…

A Mole in MAGA’s Midst

Alexandre Lefebvre reads “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right” by Laura K. Field.

The Secessionists of Shasta County

Nevin Kallepalli investigates political resentment in rural California, in an essay from LARB Quarterly no. 47: “Security.”

Is Justice Barrett Listening?

Leah Litman prosecutes Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s new legal memoir, “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.”

An Emergency Born of Prosperity

Zoe Adams considers “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America” by Brian Goldstone.

LITERARY REVIEW – DECEMBER 2025

LITERARY REVIEW : The latest issue features  Peter Marshall on Holbein * Joanna Kavenna on Camus * Sophie Oliver on Margaret Atwood * Dorian Lynskey on George Orwell * Daisy Dunn on Clodia of Rome * David Andress on Jean-Paul Marat * John Foot on the Spanish Civil War * Jerry White on high-rise buildings * Edward Shawcross on Mexico * Daniel A Bell on the Chinese examination system * Anna Reid on Russian women * Charles Darwent on Barnett Newman * Robert Crawford on T S Eliot * Ian Sansom on William Golding * Mark Lawson on John Updike * Charles Shaar Murray on musicians * Patrick Porter on NATO * Thomas Morris on Renaissance diagrams * Diane Purkiss on palmistry *  Nigel Andrew on penguins * John Mullan on pedants * Molly Pepper Steemson on Anthony Bourdain * Mark Ford on Helen Vendler * Emma Smith on book

Holbein: Renaissance Master By Elizabeth Goldring

It’s an irony to savour: the man who invented the Tudors was a German. If Henry VIII, his wives and courtiers exercise a stronger hold on the public imagination than their Plantagenet precursors or Stuart successors, it is because we can all picture them so clearly. That, in turn, is due to an extraordinary sequence of portraits and drawings produced between the late 1520s and early 1540s by Hans Holbein of Augsburg (c 1497–1543), many of which have become instantly recognisable. 

Doublethink & Doubt

Orwell: 2+2=5 By Raoul Peck (dir)

George Orwell: Life and Legacy By Robert Colls

Nobody under the age of seventy-five has heard George Orwell’s voice. The only extant video footage is in a silent movie of the Eton Wall Game. None of his many wartime recordings for the BBC Eastern Service has survived. By all accounts his voice, damaged by a bullet to the throat during the Spanish Civil War, was thin, flat and weak. In fact, the controller of the BBC Overseas Service complained that putting on ‘so wholly unsuitable a voice’ made the BBC appear ‘ignorant of the essential needs of the microphone and of the audience’. 

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS – NOVEMBER 20, 2025

Table of Contents - November 20, 2025 | The New York Review of Books

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features Fintan O’Toole on Kamala’s pointless campaign memoir, Jonathan Lethem on One Battle After Another, Anne Diebel on the trials of infertility, Colin B. Bailey on Watteau’s sad clowns, Linda Kinstler on the invention of sovereign states, Langdon Hammer on James Schuyler’s shimmering poetry, Samuel Stein on NIMBYs and YIMBYs, Miranda Seymour on Frankenstein’s mother, Adam Shatz on Alice Coltrane, a poem by Rae Armantrout, and much more.

The Lingering Delusion

107 Days by Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris’s memoir 107 Days succeeds at least in distilling the evasions and weaknesses of the modern Democratic Party.

Falling Off the Map

The Life and Death of States:  Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty by Natasha Wheatley

How States Die: Membership and Survival in the International System by Douglas Lemke

World War I set the stage a century ago for new ways of thinking about where states come from and what happens when they disappear.

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS – AUTUMN 2025

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue of LARB Alien“, which wades into the unfamiliar. In Greta Rainbow’s “Tourists,” a woman travels to foggy Athens, where she confronts the unknowability of the city and her partner. In Sara Levine’s “Peter and the Women,” Peter (badly, ineptly, inappropriately, indecently) manages the women in his life: his hospice-bound mother and her nurse, as well as his girlfriends and one-night stands. And in Ari Braverman’s “Dogs of the Solar Steppe,” the narrator faces a decade-long punishment, performing domestic labor for a woman called Big Mother. Her former life assumes a “sheen of fantasy,” and the story warns us of “the easy slippage between one state and another.”