Gulf Road and the Kuwait City skyline / Photo courtesy of the author Reflecting on the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the current pandemic, the author writes about wanting “to grab the future with both hands, to sing about survival, to believe, like my father did, that Kuwait is worth rebuilding from scratch.” In
Month: April 2020
Statue of Ramos at Ponta Verde beach, Maceió, Brazil / Wikipedia In her new translation of Graciliano Ramos’s São Bernardo, forthcoming early next month from New York Review Books, Padma Viswanathan reproduces the linguistic edges of Ramos’s quicksilver prose in hopes of raising Ramos’s profile in the anglophone world. Graciliano Ramos worked hard. Born in
Left: Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal in Normal People (2020) / Courtesy of IMDB Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel is a meticulous observation, or even a study, of how one human being can have immense, intense power over another. (The following review contains spoilers.) The novel Normal People, which was first published in 2018, is the
The author at the Zakir Hussain Delhi College during the Bengali Literary Festival 2018 / Photo courtesy of bitanchakraborty.com Simplicity and quiet elegance never fail to impress us. The effect of a good short story often is like a fugue or an adagio in a musical composition, creating impressions fugitifs, in the best manner of
Writer Ethel Rohan documents the little victories that stand in place of the life events that should be happening out there as she and her family shelter in place in San Francisco. My house is loud. It is day 15 of San Francisco’s Covid-19 shelter-in-place order. In the family room, my husband is recording a
Top Row (left to right): Jonathan Auxier, Monica Brown, Tanita S. Davis. Middle row: Adib Khorram, Sonia Patel, Randy Ribay. Bottom row: Cynthia Weill, Tanaya Winder, Janet Wong. World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, has announced the names of the jury members who will select the finalists for the renowned