Image: NEYRO2008/123rf stock photoIn his address to the International Association of Crime Writers 2013 meeting in Oxford, Christopher MacLehose commented that publishers like him are always looking f…
In Every Issue
OYSpace DiasporaCrammed Discs This issue’s special section on climate dystopias set me wondering what kind of responses to an uncertain future dwell in the world music community. O…
Illustration: Verso BooksDespite the popular culture trope that the golden age of activism (the 1950s and ’60s) is over, despite the endless distractions offered by digital entertainment, and despite…
A still from the film Ten Years (2015).When Hong Kong was returned to communist China in 1997 under the “one country, two systems” principle, no one really knew for sure what would happe…
Skeppsholmen Island in central Stockholm, home of Moderna Museet where the Stockholm Literature festival takes place. Photo: Routes North/www.routesnorth.comAs literary events go, Stockholm Literature…
Alina BronskyBaba Dunja’s Last LoveTrans. Tim MohrEuropa Editions Alina Bronsky is skillful at inventing darkly humorous protagonists, and Baba Dunja is no exception. This short novel is a surpri…
Rowan Atkinson as Maigret in the ITV feature-length adaptation of Maigret Sets a Trap.Early last year, fans of the actor Rowan Atkinson were surprised, and many astonished, by the British net…
Beats AntiqueShadowboxAntique American composer Henry Cowell traveled to a variety of countries in the 1950s on behalf of the State Department, building bridges between cultures consider…
Migrants heading north through Mexico on La Bestia (“The Beast”).Nadia Villafuerte’s collection of short stories Barcos en Houston (Ships in Houston) portrays a wide variety of voices inhabit…
With two world wars, revolutions, famines, colonial violence, and state-sponsored genocides, the twentieth century was the most murderous in history, claiming the lives of some two hundred million peo…
Photos © David Joshua JenningsLiterature inhabits the antiquated, potholed avenues of New Orleans like a dense and permanent fog. Stories sweat down from the French Quarter’s trellised terraces, haunt…
Photos by Laura Hernandez.Celebrating its eleventh year, the Brooklyn Book Festival hosts writers from around the world and highlights the literary landscape in a two-day book extravaganza. The festiv…
Petina GappahRotten RowFaber & Faber2016 Petina Gappah’s new collection of stories is named after the street where the criminal courts in Harare sit: Rotten Row, where the powerful a…
This summer the British Library held another of its highly successful Bodies from the Library days celebrating the Golden Age of crime fiction. We had papers on Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh, and Georget…
Liu Fang (center) plays the pipa during a rehearsal with the Matangi Quartet.I have great respect for all musical traditions and have enjoyed collaborating in past decades with great mus…
Gunnhild Øyehaug’s “Dreamwriter,” among other things, is a story about layers, layering, the lattice of the finished work and the trickle down that is life—that wonderful image, the tørrfiskstativ…
In an era in which we spend an increasing number of our waking hours immersed in virtual and augmented realities, gliding across the two-dimensional surfaces of a placeless digital world, it is perhap…
Photo: flickr.com/people/feefoxfotosLike a beautiful, moody lover, Wellington doesn’t need to treat you kindly. Friends may sometimes wonder what you see in it, but when the city is good…
In the foothills of the Himalayas, a few hundred meters below the Dalai Lama’s temple in Dharamshala, on a quiet, winding, monsoon-eroded road next to a motorcycle garage, sits the bookstore/café Illi…
Dick Francis and wife, Mary, stroll along the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Photo: Acey Harper / Life Image Collection / Getty ImagesWhen I was a newly minted assistant professor, Twayne’s E…
Guus KuijerThe Bible for Unbelievers: The Beginning: Genesis Trans. Laura Watkinson Seven Stories Press, 2016 The Bible has occupied a central position in W…
TajaliyattAfoforo Music Club Tajaliyatt is the second album from the ambitious Achref Chargui Trio. Composed of the aforementioned Chargui, a Tunisian oud playe…
Ana BlandianaAna Blandiana is a poet of rich formal resources. Since her first book, First-Person Plural (1964), she has written in a variety of forms ranging from sonnets to traditionally rh…
The appetite for Malaysian fiction in the English-speaking world seems fixated on family sagas set in the Japanese Occupation of Malaya—stories largely irrelevant to the current sociopolitical challen…
A triptych mural by local artist John Stephens Coppin graces the third floor of the Detroit Public Library.There are cities that get by on their good looks . . . and there are cities like…