A Labyrinth for Our Time
There is a House with 7,678 halls; in the House lives the eponymous protagonist of Susanna Clarke’s new novel, Piranesi. The amnesiac narrator knows nothing…
Category: Fiction
Re-embodying Palestinian Memory | Public Books
The ethnic cleansing and ongoing colonization of Palestine are a war not only against bodies, ecosystems, and livelihoods but against memory itself. This war against…
Who Killed Nordic Noir? | Public Books
We begin, as usual, with a dead body. In April 2020 an 84-year-old Swedish woman died in the happily unsuspicious circumstances of old age. Her…
Books and Abandonment | Public Books
Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season, which was a sensation in Mexico on its 2017 publication, arrives in English during a season of stormy weather for anglophone…
Internet Dystopias after Trump | Public Books
Fitting chaos into form is what genre was made for. But what does it mean for our literature—let alone our society—when reality suddenly turns wolfishly…
Igiaba Scego on Writing between History and Literature
Igiaba Scego is a prominent Italian writer and journalist of Somali heritage, whose work focuses on migration and intercultural dialogue. In this interview, Scego talks…
Reimagining Italy through Black Women’s Eyes
Every year, in the village of Marino in the Roman countryside, there is a riotous festival to celebrate a centuries-old battle. In the 1571 Battle…
“Soulful, Perhaps Even Magical” Science
This is the 20th installment of our series An Engineer Reads a Novel. “The supposed conflict between science and religion,” according to biologist Stephen…
The DJ Is a Time Machine
When I was a student, half a century ago, we used to talk of the abolition of distance, because of those then comparatively recent triumphs,…
Longing for the Writer’s Space
Call me romantic, but I have always been curious about writers’ houses and their belongings, especially desks, pens, and manuscripts. As a fan, I relish…