Laying the Bones Bare: Honesty and Death in Gabriel García Márquez’s “Until August.”

Laying the Bones Bare: Honesty and Death in Gabriel García Márquez's "Until August."

[ad_1] The publication of Until August, a new novella by Gabriel García Márquez (translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean), ten years after his death could be seen as a betrayal. His sons acknowledge as much. They admit in the book’s preface that Márquez himself, after working on this manuscript through memory loss near the … Read more

Love, Death and Karma in the “Age of Vice” – Chicago Review of Books

Love, Death and Karma in the “Age of Vice” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] In 2002, a Toyota Landcruiser belonging to Bollywood superstar Salman Khan allegedly crashed into a bakery in Bandra, a trendy suburb in Western Mumbai, running over five unhoused men asleep on the pavement right outside. The trial dominated headlines and sparked dinner table debates for months, until Khan’s driver testified that he was the … Read more

Meditation, ego death, and the humor of being alive in “Bad Thoughts”: An interview with Nada Alic – Chicago Review of Books

Meditation, ego death, and the humor of being alive in “Bad Thoughts”: An interview with Nada Alic – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] If you want to get to know the debut author Nada Alic, you should read her new collection Bad Thoughts. And once you read it, you will realize, yes: you already know her, and maybe, in fact, you are her. The protagonists of her stories are all different sides of the same person, different … Read more

We All Have a Hunger in “You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty” – Chicago Review of Books

We All Have a Hunger in “You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Five years after the death of her husband, visual artist Feyi Adekola is starting to come out of her shell, wondering if it’s possible to love again. After some casual dating, she starts a mostly platonic—but possibly more serious—relationship with Nasir Blake, a well-connected consultant. Feyi’s personal and professional lives are suddenly thrown into … Read more

The Refractions of Death and of Pandemic in “How High We Go In The Dark” – Chicago Review of Books

The Refractions of Death and of Pandemic in “How High We Go In The Dark” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] What is there to say when you are confronted by a dying loved one in the midst of a pandemic? Most of us have more than likely had to answer that question more frequently, courtesy of COVID-19. Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut novel, How High We Go In The Dark, tackles this issue, through a different … Read more

Becoming Alive in Death, as Examined in “Life of the Party” and “Dreaming of You” – Chicago Review of Books

Becoming Alive in Death, as Examined in “Life of the Party” and “Dreaming of You” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] In the acknowledgments of the novel Dreaming of You, author Melissa Lozada-Oliva includes the following credit: “Thank you Olivia Gatwood, for being so obsessed with dead girls & dying with me.” At this point in her career, such an expression of gratitude is no surprise; poets Lozada-Oliva and Gatwood’s work have been integrally intertwined … Read more

A Ruse Against Death in “Zabor or The Psalms” – Chicago Review of Books

A Ruse Against Death in “Zabor or The Psalms” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Writing about writing and telling stories about stories — these kinds of narratives can feel circularly post-modern. But, as it turns out, they are actually quite conventional and ancient. Homer’s The Odyssey, the vaunted paterfamilias of storytelling in the West, is an epic whose hero’s primary genius is not as a warrior or leader, … Read more

Focusing on the story in “The City of Good Death” – Chicago Review of Books

Focusing on the story in “The City of Good Death” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Priyanka Champaneri’s enthralling debut novel, The City of Good Death, winner of the 2018 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, is a heart-warming read about a city where people come to die in peace and the beauty of being alive, enhanced by the unapologetic presence of death in the lives of its characters. … Read more