Literature

For those that might still think of New York as “The City That Never Sleeps,” I have some bad news: that title should most certainly belong to Seoul. You see, there is no last call in Seoul. And while the capital of South Korea might only have around one million more residents than New York

Spring is the sweetest time to discover new poetry. Lingering daylight and blossoms, the chance to open a book on a park bench and be transported, briefly, to a heightened world. Each spring, I find myself gravitating towards collections, both intimate and bold, that wrestle with identity and history, desire and self-definition. Poetry opens up

When I was in my early twenties I watched the movie “Annabelle” with my cousins and brother. It did its job in discomforting me, but I’ll never forget what my brother said as he watched, bored, eating popcorn, and checking his phone. “After all our ancestors went through, there is no way they’re just going

Eloghosa Osunde and Okwiri Oduor. Photo of Oduor by Chelsea Bieker. It’s hard to argue with Booker Prize–winning author Damon Galgut’s assertion that 2021 was “a great year for African writing.” And as WLT’s “New African Voices” issue helped make clear, 2022 is shaping up to be one as well. Here, then, are two debut novelists

In Claire Kohda’s Woman, Eating, the protagonist Lydia, a 20-something Londoner and artist, is a frustrated foodie. She salivates over the idea of the delicacies of her Japanese father’s homeland, and reads labels of food with interest and desire. But for all the intent, Lydia can’t eat or drink—she is a vampire and can only

I Believe the Man in the Attic Has a Gun Budi Darma Share article “The Old Man With No Name” by Budi Darma Fess Avenue wasn’t a long street. There were only three houses on it, all with attics and fairly large yards. Drawn there by an ad in the classifieds, I moved into the attic room

In the past few years, as I’ve been working on my own book about technology, I’ve been reading books about technology—critiques of Silicon Valley, of internet culture—and wondering: where are all the people of color? Sure, Silicon Valley is known as the home of the tech bro—a white man, probably wearing a Patagonia jacket and

Readers will naturally and, perhaps, unfortunately, wish to make connections between Sayaka Murata’s (b. 1979) newest novel, Earthlings, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove Press, 2021), and her wonderfully quirky Convenience Store Woman (which I previously reviewed for WLT). To be sure, the two novels share a focus on people who live at the margins of

Like the scrap collector in one of his stories, Omer Friedlander’s prose sifts through the junk of this world to find those whimsical elements that are otherwise overlooked. Rich in imagery and sprinkled with humor and spice, The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land conjures intimate and inventive portraits of Israeli life. Even

Returning to England after two weeks in Nigeria back in 2019, I found myself marveling at how green the grass on the side of the motorway was. The thing I love about coming home from anywhere, is the moment where you can look at everything with a fresh, often rose-tinted, perspective. Maybe it’s partly “absence

Royal Alcazar, Seville, Spain / Photo by Gary Campbell-Hall / Flickr December in the City December in the city. In the tower,the frail angel, radiant in sunlightfrailer still, looks down through the same blue airas in springtime, contemplatingthe open labyrinth of quiet, old streets.The harmonies and contrasts of whitewashand red ocher along their curving lines.In

The Writing on the Uterus Wall In the Womb I Leave Graffiti for My Younger Brother You, lithe swimmer with feet you will use like hands, meet me here—read what I write on the wall of mum’s uterus the way later we will cobalt blue spray the field to mark where to hit, throw, catch

A few years ago, during the initial craze of 23andMe, I received a gleeful call from my Turkish mother who had just taken the test. We have Serbian, Bulgarian, and Italian blood! Considering her deep familial ties to the Ottoman Empire, I didn’t find this particularly surprising. Rather it was her enthusiasm at the now

Before starting a job as a radio copywriter, where I frequently wrote ads for strip clubs and sex shops, I worked the counter at a small bakery near a college campus. Many customers were professors who made small talk while I sliced their olive loaves. On occasion – not daily, but enough to see a

The theatre is a perennially popular setting for novelists and no wonder. The tawdry glamour and sense of spectacle make it a rich gift for any author, but it’s what happens behind the scenes that I find the most interesting. This is particularly true for those novels set on the 19th-century London stage or in

“Inte hora,” a general tells his wife early on in Dalia Azim’s Country of Origin. You are free, in Arabic. The saying appears at first during a quarrel over politics in the intimacy of a Cairo home while, outside, revolts against Egypt’s then leader, King Farouk, combust the city. A saying echoed three decades later

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It seems like every day there’s a new slate of bad news for the queer community in the United States. From anti-trans legislation in Texas to the Florida governor signing the “Don’t Say Gay” bill to books being pulled off shelves—nationwide—for no reason other than who their writers are: queer authors, authors of color, and