Literature

For those of us who put off holiday gift shopping, it can be hard to figure out what to get our loved ones in a pinch. This list offers twenty-three of the best books of 2021—with a couple of guest appearances from 2020—categorized to fit the needs of almost anyone. The Foodie Cal Peternell, Burnt

No One Was Exploited in the Production of this Space Tea Extrasolar Teas Box   (Front) Extrasolar Teas — Xenobiotic teas, grown where they grow, cultivated by their cultivators Flower of Suhwill Behold our oldest tea. A sharp, herbaceous cup with a smooth soothing finish sure to assuage your stress and awaken your yeetsu. (Top)

[embedded content] In this fourth episode of WLT Book Buzz, Laura Hernandez & Bunmi Ishola cover 18 books in translation for children and young adults, with translations from Japanese, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. Dragons, zombies, friendship, and adventure + a special shout-out to @worldkidlit! Books in Episode 4 1. Chirri & Chirra, by Kaya Doi; trans. Yuki Kaneko 2. Soul Lanterns, by

I’ve Been Looking Everywhere for Me Missing Woman Unwittingly Joins Search Party Looking for Herself They had water. They suckled canteens,wiping their mouths with the backs of their wrists.When I say they, I mean for days all I sawwere walking lampposts. Then, them: a crowd in red shirts,“so as to be visible in shrubbery,” I

Retrospection about nuns is in.  Claire Luchette‘s novel Agatha of Little Neon packs a suckerpunch beyond its bold pink cover. At first it is unassuming, as a woman in a habit can be. The story opens with four sisters who are being removed from their home near Buffalo to be put in charge of running

From searing critiques of colonialism to exhortations of Black joy; from meditations on art and grief to the origin story of American chattel slavery and its long-lasting legacy, the books on this year’s list demand to be read. They are vast and wide-ranging, yet deeply personal and profoundly reflective—a worthy gold standard in any year.

If there’s one thing to note about the tremendous story collections on this year’s list, it’s the global terrain these stories cover. There’s the wide-ranging geography—from China to Florida, Argentina to New Orleans—but there’s also the questions each story asks. Diving deep into queries of desire and hunger, memory and politics, and much more, each

An Obsessive Unpacks a Bewildering Insult Eric Ozawa Share article “Fish (in 13 sections)” by Eric Ozawa 1. Introduction:A fish. She called me a fish. I have no idea what she meant. 2. Description:I should say first that we had been fighting: indeed, there had been a dispute; let us leave it at that. She

By now, our fandom of translators should be no secret. We’ve spoken to contemporary translators about the politics of grammar and how to render a slender neck from Arabic poetry, about imperialism and swearing in Tamil and before that, we chopped it up with others about translating slang and living in a two-translator household.   We couldn’t

When it comes to great novels, this year felt like an embarrassment of riches. The books collected here are ambitious—in intellect, in scope, in subject matter, and in size. Some are perfect encapsulations of the unique problems of our time, while others illuminate the human threads that connect us through time and space. Novelists often

Whether it’s disappearing ink or rejection erasure poems, The Commuter, our weekly magazine dedicated to the weird, wonky, and off-kilter, gives a bite-sized sample of dazzling work from writers willing to experiment. Receive a delightful literary amuse bouche in the form of poetry, prose, or graphic narrative every Monday morning by signing up for The

This week Recommended Reading published its 500th issue. For 500 Wednesdays in a row since May 23, 2012, we’ve shared extraordinary and innovative fiction from emerging and established writers with heartfelt, personal recommendations. The fiction we publish is not only formally masterful, it’s exciting. We are drawn to stories that usurp expectations: charismatic and troubled

In a year marked by epic highs and devastating lows, we’re taking a look back at our archives to see the essays, reading lists, and interviews that resonated the most with you, our readers. In a time of both hope and turmoil, you looked for reading lists to help you make sense of the world,

Originally published in 1994, Mario Bellatin’s Beauty Salon, translated by David Shook (Deep Vellum, 2021), takes place in an unnamed city as a mysterious, highly infectious disease begins to spread, afflicting its victims with an excruciating descent toward death, particularly infecting those on society’s margins, including gay men. The immediate correspondence one might draw is

Comic by Pavel Ortega like no one can successfullypush away the sea waters—it has been said in a lovepoem—nadie couldmake me obey whatmy living make-up doesn’tobey, it’s not a questionof ideas but of that frothyswell that in billions of cellssplashes inside me and ineverything that lives, the onlyvia is this sounding refusal,Thoreau must have explained

Photo by Piotr Wójcik, Agencja Gazeta / Courtesy of Culture.pl Zbigniew Mentzel’s Kołakowski: Czytanie świata (Wydawnictwo Znak, 2020) is the first full-length biography of Leszek Kołakowski, one of the leading Polish philosophers and cultural historians of the twentieth century. Its author, Zbigniew Mentzel, knows his subject very well, having edited several volumes of the philosopher’s

The past year and a half of being stuck inside and working from home has led many of us to turn to our pets as consistent conversational companions. For some, we have even adopted the peculiar social practices of our furry friends. If you are lucky enough to have one of the 370 million pet