Literature

Elif Batuman’s Either/Or, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Translating Myself and Others, Colin Barrett’s Homesickness, and Ali Smith’s Companion Piece all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Month. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.” * Fiction 1. Either/Or by Elif Batuman(Penguin Press) 13 Rave • 7 Positive • 1 MixedRead an

TODAY: In 1849, Anne Brontë (far left, with sisters Emily and Charlotte) dies at 29. Yan Lianke explores the overlooked contemporary Chinese literature of mythorealism. | Lit Hub Criticism What writing a novel and tending a garden have in common: Naheed Phiroze Patel in praise of lifelong projects. | Lit Hub Who was Leonardo da

Family plays an important part in much fiction, of course, but sometimes the short story form has offered us an insight into family life that the longer novel does not. Because it can only provide us with a few snapshots, or a handful of moments, perhaps even just one episode in a family’s life, the

I wrote a version of this essay, about the Noah Baumbach-Greta Gerwig film Frances Ha, when I was 21 years old. It was 2013, a year and a half after the film came out. I wanted to write about how the film frames its main character’s coming of age, which happens when she is in

TODAY: In 1819, Julia Ward Howe, a prominent American abolitionist and author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” is born.     “It is a fact that if you are looking to raise llamas with another person, you are seriously considering a lifelong commitment to each other.” Aileen Weintraub on finding love in upstate New York.

‘The Snake’ is a short story by the American author John Steinbeck (1902-68), published in The Monterey Beacon in 1935 before being included in Steinbeck’s collection The Long Valley in 1938. The story tells of a young scientist who is at work experimenting with animals in his laboratory when he receives a visit from a

I did not grow up in a household that discussed art. My family did not go to art museums and no coffee table books filled with the work of Impressionists or abstract artists adorned our tables. What little I learned about famous artists and techniques in my youth, I learned in art class in public

TODAY: In 1799, Alexander Pushkin is born.    “I don’t even know if it is possible to decolonize portraiture, but it’s important for me to take those steps toward attempting to do that work.” Nikole Hannah-Jones and Gio Swaby discuss portraiture that uplifts Black women. | Lit Hub Art What can dogs teach us about

Poets have often tried to emphasise the hopeful aspects of human nature, and our tendency to look optimistically towards the future as a brighter, happier time. Individual ambitions and aspirations, too, have often come under the purview of some of the best and most celebrated poets writing in English. Below, we select and introduce ten

This essay is excerpted from Dear America (March 2020) and was originally called “Titration.”  * I. Dear American gun owner, Several days have passed since the most recent mass shootings. I want to write to you, as a mother, a grandmother & a teacher, about your guns. I don’t know you, but I know you

I haven’t taken a complete survey of world religions, but I suspect that some form of the question “Who’s there?” is the ultimate inquiry every spiritual tradition seeks to answer. It’s certainly the fundamental question Buddhist and Hindu philosophies pose. The great Hindu sage Sri Ramana Maharshi taught the question Nan Yar? (“Who am I?”)

The tale of the Three Apples is not quite so familiar to Western readers as, say, the story of Aladdin or Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, but it is a more authentic tale in that it was included in the original medieval collection known as the One Thousand and One Nights (whereas Aladdin and

May 24, 2022, 12:53pm All billionaires are bad, but MacKenzie Scott—novelist, Toni Morrison protégée, and ex-wife of Jeff Bezos—is at least doing a better job than most at growing her vast fortune at a slightly less alarming rate than most of the other billionaires in the world. Scott, who recently donated $436 million to Habitat for Humanity

The following is an excerpt from Nell Zink’s new novel Avalon. Zink’s other novels include The Wallcreeper, Mislaid, Private Novelist, Nicotine, and Doxology. She lives in Berlin. I lay on my backpack, denying to myself that my arm was broken. The moon had made me think it was light enough to gambol down a mountain.

‘Axolotl’ is a short story by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar (1914-84). The story was published in Cortázar’s 1956 collection End of the Game and Other Stories. ‘Axolotl’ is narrated by a lonely man who regularly visits the local zoo, where he becomes fascinated by the axolotls in the aquarium. In time, he states that

May 23, 2022, 4:49pm Well, it’s that time of year again. Time for TIME to dub 100 musicians, actors, artists, activists, politicians as The Most Important. (Actually, to put it in their terms: Artists, Innovators, Titans, Leaders, Icons, Pioneers.) It appears there is —yet again—only one (1) novelist on this list. And, yes, it’s Sally Rooney. Of

“What I always thought the finest thing in the theater, ever since childhood and even now, is the chandelier. . .”–Baudelaire* A film star is not a character in a book, not a writer with his text to be thought about, not a personage in history fixed by the glue of biography, not one of

‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ is a 1940 short story by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). The story tells of the narrator’s discovery of a fictional country named Uqbar, whose inhabitants wrote of the legends of a planet named Tlön. The inhabitants of Tlön believe a form of philosophy known as subjective idealism, meaning