For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] As a child, amidst familial turbulence, I prayed to my mouse plush toy, asking existential questions through wordless telepathy. My family was not religionless—we were Buddhists who attended temple on major holidays—but I found comfort in confiding in this stuffed animal that I associated with wisdom of its own. I understand now, after reading … Read more
[ad_1] We like to think we are masters of our bodies and minds and, for the most part, we possess total agency and comprehension of our thoughts and actions. This assumption is embedded so thoroughly in our society that it seems unnecessary to even observe it. But that is exactly what the legendary Brazilian writer … Read more
[ad_1] Is liberalism dead? Has that dewy-eyed, woke, overly optimistic beast of limited eyesight, enlarged heart, and dangerously underdeveloped brain, this Jabberwocky of the geopolitical wood finally been slain? More to the point, can we at last acknowledge that there are no such things as universal values, no inherently reliable truth to language, and that … Read more
[ad_1] Some of our best literary characters, such as Adrian Veidt in Alan Moore’s Watchmen or Jay Gatsby, fall from grace due to their idealism being overtaken by bitterness and calculating utilitarianism. Their perspective is lost and therefore so is the world they are striving to achieve. What made them so compelling at first was … Read more
[ad_1] The thing about longing is that it could take any form, really. Though vastly different on the surface, everything from going on walks or reading poems, to forged marriages for the sake of securing permanent legal residence, skipping meals, or crossing borders can be powered by an ineffable call towards something, someone, that emanates … Read more
[ad_1] “One thing all truths have in common,” observes Angela, the protagonist of award-winning author Jennifer duBois’s fourth novel, The Last Language, is that “they are only visible from certain distances.” Angela is a twenty-seven-year-old PhD candidate in linguistics at Harvard. She is also the recently widowed mother of four-year-old Josephine. After a harrowing miscarriage, … Read more
[ad_1] This past July, the German literary organization Litprof announced that Palestinian writer Adania Shibli won the 2023 LiBeraturpreis award for her novel Minor Detail and would receive the award at a ceremony on October 13, 2023 at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair. As is well known by now, the Frankfurt Book Fair decided to … Read more
[ad_1] Building on her years of innovative and thorough reporting for publications like XXL, Time, Complex, and NPR, Sowmya Krishnamurthy’s Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion deftly traces 50+ years of innovation in hip hop with regard to creativity and fashion. Through interviews with key players and pictures worth thousands of words, Krishnamurthy traces … Read more
[ad_1] When she moved to Toronto—not far from the windy, desolate plains where she grew up—Dawn thought she had escaped the traumas of her past. And yet, when her life doesn’t go as she hoped it would in the big city, she finds herself driving back to the small town of her childhood—where her mother … Read more
[ad_1] The protagonist of Vengeance is Mine, (translated by Jordan Stump from La Vengeance m’appartient), Marie NDiaye’s twelfth novel, is known to the reader only by her title and surname. A French lawyer, she is Maître Susane, and at the novel’s opening, she has recently opened a struggling law practice. She drives an ancient car … Read more