Literature

Fiction

The Siren Song of Illness

In writing The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann struggled to free himself from his artistic preoccupation with sickness and death.

June 25, 2026 issue

Mark Ford

The Late Bohemian

Rosemary Tonks emulated French Symbolist poets before converting to Christianity and renouncing all her own works.

July 23, 2026 issue

Gabriel Winslow-Yost

Climate and Punishment

Vigil finds George Saunders returning to the theme of his first novel, grief—this time not for a person but for a planet.

July 23, 2026 issue

Laura Miller

Visiting Privileges

Harriet Clark’s debut novel is a fable-like story of growing up in the fallout of a family’s radical dreams.

June 25, 2026 issue

Christopher Byrd

The Other in the Mirror

In Mathias Énard’s many novels, encounters between cultures can lead to transformation—and peril.

June 11, 2026 issue

Joanna Biggs

Enter Man

Makenna Goodman’s new novel, Helen of Nowhere, offers up an exhilarating myth for men who need to be shuffled offstage.

June 11, 2026 issue

Louisa Lim

Scarred in Hong Kong

Recent fiction by Hong Kong writers explores life in a society traumatized by ever-tightening Chinese national security laws that suppress political discussion and artistic freedom.

May 28, 2026 issue

Christopher Tayler

‘Facing the Past’

Ben Lerner’s dazzling new novel, Transcription, plays variations on the conflicts and bonds that are felt among three generations.

May 28, 2026 issue

Essays by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith

The Instrumentalist

At the heart of the film Tár is a conductor who cannot see beyond her generation’s field of vision.

January 19, 2023 issue

Zadie Smith

In Defense of Fiction

We have found fiction wanting in myriad ways but rarely paused to wonder, or recall, what we once wanted from it.

October 24, 2019 issue

President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G7 Summit, Krün, Germany, June 2015

Zadie Smith

On Optimism and Despair

If novelists know anything it’s that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities.

December 22, 2016 issue

More by Zadie Smith

James Baldwin (1924–1987)

James Baldwin

James Baldwin

A Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis

January 7, 1971 issue

James Baldwin

God’s Country

March 23, 1967 issue

The Latest

Deborah Eisenberg

Out of the Rubble

In novels written immediately after World War II, Wolfgang Koeppen mined the conscience of Germany.

August 20, 2026 issue

Robert Glück, in conversation with Jarrett Earnest

Robert Glück on His Books, Frank O’Hara, and Dreams

Episode 19 of Private Life

July 1, 2026

Fintan O’Toole

Gulliver’s Warning

Like Gulliver in Lilliput, “greatness” in the political realm depends on the existence of a group deemed puny or weak.

June 25, 2026 issue

Raven Leilani

The Work of Feeling

Toni Morrison’s Love is a novel of epiphanies about selfhood, human relations, and the mundane operations of power.

May 12, 2026

Daniel Lefferts

The Hardy Men

Why is a right-wing press reissuing century-old adolescent mystery novels?

April 16, 2026

Francine Prose

Blood in the Game

For two novels that address the escalating violence, rampant corruption, and class resentment poisoning our society, Lee Clay Johnson’s Bloodline and Carl Hiaasen’s Fever Beach are also surprisingly funny.

April 23, 2026 issue

Hermione Lee

‘To Share Is Our Duty’

Two consummate Virginia Woolf scholars have added more than 1,400 letters to the corpus. On show are charm, careful condolence, generosity, candor about her reading and writing, and a belief that “communication is health.”

April 23, 2026 issue

Tim Parks

A Devotee of Deception

In Domenico Starnone’s The Old Man by the Sea, an elderly writer looks back across a life in which he has always sought distance and control rather than passion.

April 23, 2026 issue

André Breton, read by Gini Alhadeff

Gini Alhadeff Reads from André Breton’s ‘Nadja’

Episode 8 of Private Life

April 1, 2026

Ben Lerner

Crowds and Lovers

In his novel G., John Berger shifts between the revolutionary possibilities of mass demonstrations and of erotic encounters, ultimately writing a historical novel about the present.

April 9, 2026 issue