Ling Ma’s “Bliss Montage,” a collection which blends the real and the surreal, has won the Story Prize for best short fiction … The two other finalists, Andrea Barrett for “Natural History” and Morgan Talty for “Night of the Living Rez,” each will get $5,000. Read more
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How is it that the United States, a country with a gross domestic product “larger than the combined economies of Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, France, and Italy,” has a higher relative poverty rate than those other advanced democracies? Why do one in eight Americans, and one in six children, live in poverty—a rate about the same as it was in 1970? Why do we put up with it? Read more
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His sagas of the Revolution and the Civil War sold tens of millions of copies, were adapted for TV and put him in the pantheon of big-name authors. Read more
This engrossing novel by the author of “The Great Believers” is many different books at once. It is a boarding school novel, offering an encapsulated view of a world within a world. It is a cold-case mystery in which readers learn new information along with the characters. It is an adult-revisiting-childhood story in which a narrator considers the past from a different viewpoint. It is also a perceptive commentary on contemporary society. These elements come together seamlessly in a fast-paced mystery. Read more
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Spanning fiction and essays, Oe’s work tackled a wide range of subjects from militarism and nuclear disarmament to innocence and trauma, and he became an outspoken champion for the voiceless in the face of what he regarded as his country’s failures. Regarded by some in Japan as distinctly western, Oe’s style was often likened to William Faulkner; in his own words, in his writing he would “start from my personal matters and then link it up with society, the state and the world” Read more
Wondering what to do with old books? Do you want to dispose of old books without just tossing them in the trash? Read on for 30+ ideas about how to dispose of old books without sending them to the landfill. Read more
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The award, one of the most prestigious in the field of American history, honors “scope, significance, depth of research and richness of interpretation.” Read more
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Known for her psychopathic antiheroes and novels such as “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “The Price of Salt,” Highsmith was a tangle of contradictions. Read more
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If the Harlem Renaissance is commonly understood as a period during which Black creatives were in vogue, then we’re in the midst of a new renaissance today, nearly a century later — not just of recent art but of the archive. Read more
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The enduring appeal of a midcentury Japanese novelist who wrote of alienation and suicide. Read more
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