Haddad’s ‘The Book of Queens’ Packs in a Century of Levantine Cataclysms
The ‘queens’ of Joumana Haddad’s The Book of Queens confront the violent vicissitudes of Levantine history.
historical fiction
Black Sorcerers in the Trenches of David Diop’s ‘At Night All Blood Is Black’
David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black is a terrifying fable whose haunting imagery explores the traumas of empire, colonial thought, and masculinity.
Chilean Author Nona Fernández’s Historical Fiction ‘The Twilight Zone’ Dismantles Good and Evil Dichotomies
In search of answers from Chile’s painful past, Nona Fernández imagines and reconstructs the events surrounding the testimony of a real-life torturer in her book, The Twilight Zone.
‘Conjure Women’ Brings Forth Racism and Reproductive Rights
It is Afia Atakora's reiteration of the current calls for racial justice that positions Conjure Women as an unadulterated masterpiece.
Providing Witness: Vasily Grossman’s ‘Stalingrad’
In Vasily Grossman, the lost and nameless victims of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union – soldier and civilian, ordinary men and women – found their literary chronicler.
Queer Love and Art in the Time of Nazis: ‘Never Anyone But You’
Never Anyone But You is an inspiring tale of surrealists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, who defied homophobia, Nazis, and gender norms while pushing the boundaries of art and love.
Discovering Family, Memory, and Teleportation in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ ‘The Water Dancer’
Ta-Nehisi Coates' debut novel about slavery in America, The Water Dancer, dares us to dance -- and remember.
Monique Truong’s ‘The Sweetest Fruits’ Puts Lafcadio Hearn in His Place
Lafcadio Hearn is highly regarded as an early writer and researcher on Japan. Monique Truong's The Sweetest Fruits irresistibly reconsiders his legacy from the perspective of the women whose lives were affected by him.
Alvarez’s ‘In The Time of the Butterflies’ Returns with Undiminished Intensity
The lure of beautiful beaches might make the Dominican Republic among the most popular tourist destinations in the Caribbean, but the ghosts of its troubled history, as captured in Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies, stalk the living.
‘Heaven and Hell’ Offers a Powerful Child’s-eye View of Japanese Colonialism
Japanese poet Toriko Takarabe grew up in Japanese-occupied Manchuria and lived to tell the harrowing tale.
‘She Would Be King’, an Afrofuturist Novel of Nation-Making in Liberia
Wayétu Moore's She Would Be King is an important exploration of power, identity, and belonging at a major historical junction in African diasporic and Liberian history.
‘The World to Come’ Proves Jim Shepard Is a Literary Magician
Disasters, loss, unrequited love, and survival instincts are all found in this remarkable short story collection spanning many eras and locations.