Ursula Hegi, a novelist who drew on her childhood in post-World War II Germany to write searing books about silence, community and historical memory, including the best-selling “Stones From the River,” died on July 27 in Sag Harbor, N.Y., on Long Island. Read more
Month: August 2026
Comedy’s Dark King Is the Internet’s Newest Book Tastemaker
‘Sunrise’ by Téa Obreht
A Wyoming ghost town provides the stage for this spectacular novel from Obreht about the enduring myths of the Wild West. Read more
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On the Booming Field of Biographies of Characters From Literature
Following Turner’s study of the Wife of Bath, similar books have hit shelves covering the lives and afterlives of Juliet (from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet), Bigger Thomas (from Richard Wright’s Native Son), Jim (from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn), Haman (from the biblical book of Esther), Hannibal Lecter (from a series of Thomas Harris novels and films, most famously The Silence of the Lambs), and finally Margaret of Anjou (our own contribution to the burgeoning genre). Still others are forthcoming—the scholar James Shapiro is apparently at work on a biography of Shakespeare’s Othello. Read more
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