For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Climate change has been the focal point of environmental concerns with the threat of rising seas, flooding, droughts, and food shortages attributed to it. Apocalyptic outcomes are on the horizon, and so many speculative narratives in recent years have projected end-of-world scenarios tied to the calamity. Sarah K. Jackson’s debut novel, Not Alone, finds … Read more
[ad_1] The pandemic changed many things. There’s no going back, no return to normal, because the normal we left behind doesn’t exist. We all see the world differently, whether we want to or not. We’ve entered the post-pandemic, and our art is beginning to reflect the shift. Authors echo these changes. They can confront those … Read more
[ad_1] A decade ago, the success of wizard books and vampire franchises had caused something of a stir in literary New York. Culture writers Lindsay Weber and Amanda Dobbins declared in Vulture that “Mermaids are the New Vampires.” More than one literary agent even went as far as telling me they were seeking out a … Read more
[ad_1] The mid-1990s seems like a pretty good era in retrospect. America was in the middle of the longest period of economic growth in history. Global pandemics were the stuff of science fiction, the Great Depression was a history lesson, the threat of global nuclear war seemingly had collapsed along with the Berlin Wall, and … Read more
[ad_1] The threat posed by technocratic fascism has played out in real time on the timelines of social media users in recent months. Whether we’re sharing words or videos or memes or embarrassing grade school yearbook photos, we’ve ceded enormous power to too few gatekeepers. The rapid changes in technology has meant our cultural critique … Read more
[ad_1] Grotesque monsters often serve as villains in children’s fairy tales. The monsters in Bora Chung’s story collection, Cursed Bunny, translated by Anton Hur, are sometimes less obvious, but not less terrifying. The stories defy conventional categorization. They range from horror to fantasy to slightly supernatural, with the individual stories varying in how they integrate … Read more
[ad_1] Satire often depends on specific moments in time and place. The challenge of writing great satire is in transcending those limits. For instance, Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal spoke to a time and place, anchored to a historic period, but rendered irrelevant by Ireland’s economic rise and the period of the Celtic Tiger. Or … Read more
[ad_1] One version of the American dream is based on the idea of owning a piece of the land. That dream seems harder to achieve every year for most Americans priced out of home ownership. Colorado’s San Luis Valley promises an exception. Cheap land can be yours in five acre plots at an affordable price. … Read more
[ad_1] Fatima Ali was a rising star. A celebrity chef featured on the reality contests Chopped and Top Chef, Ali aspired to open the eyes and mouths of American diners to Pakistani flavors. But in 2017, at the age of twenty-nine, she was diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, and soon after passed … Read more
[ad_1] The six stories in Jem Calder’s debut collection, Reward System, paint our contemporary world in the hues of a dystopia. The tales play out across greater London—although without knowing that at the onset, it would be easy to confuse the setting as any major Western city. The same dilemmas facing Calder’s young characters could … Read more