The Best Books of 2025
Our Best Books of 2025 draws from inventive authors and scrappy publishers. Has there ever been a better time to be a reader than these tumultuous times?
ian mcewan
The Erotic Disruption of the Self in Paul Schrader’s ‘The Comfort of Strangers’
Paul Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers presents the discomfiting encounter with another —someone like you—and yet entirely unlike you, mysterious to you, unknown and unknowable.
Ian McEwan’s Brexit Satire, ‘The Cockroach’, Leaves Little to the Imagination
With his latest, The Cockroach, the otherwise masterful British novelist Ian McEwan proves that too much cleverness can kill satire.
A Man, a Woman, a Brooding Replicant and Readership: On Ian McEwan’s ‘Machines Like Me’
Purists who see Ian McEwan's comments about science fiction and his novel, Machines Like Me, as a slight against their beloved literary genre are missing the point.
Telling Stories: The Craft of Narrative and the Writing Life
Equal parts textbook, memoir, and reflection on the writing process, this is a cogent, realistic, and inspirational advice for professional and novice writers of all sorts.