The mysterious death of the Japanese National Railways’ first chief casts its shadow over this brilliantly polyphonic finale, which faithfully recreates real-life events in postwar Tokyo. Read more
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The memoir, first published in 2020, explores Tomine’s life through a series of autobiographical sketches. When a sudden medical incident lands Tomine in the emergency room, he begins to question if it was really all worthwhile: despite the accolades and opportunities of a seemingly charmed career, it’s the gaffes, humiliations, slights, and insults he’s experienced (or caused) within the industry that loom largest in his memory. Read more
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Why is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology. Read more
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The Romance Writers of America has withdrawn an award for a novel widely criticized for its sympathetic portrait of a cavalry officer who participated in the slaughter of Lakota people at the Battle of Wounded Knee. Read more
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Writing didn’t serve the purpose I wanted it to, which was to fix the fundamentally broken relationship between myself and other people. Read more
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The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing—a charity whose aim is to bring African writing to a wider audience through, among other programming, an annual £10,000 literary award for an exemplary published short story by an African writer—has named Meron Hadero their 2021 winner. Hadero won for her short story “The Street Sweep,” published in ZYZZYVA in 2018. Read more
All About Me!, to be published on 30 November, will cover everything from the film director’s military service to his long comedic partnership with Carl Reiner. Read more
A sprawling, ambitious debut novel that is as impassioned in promoting Black women’s autonomy as it is insistent on acknowledging our common humanity. Read more
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We rarely talk about spring books or winter reading. What is it about summer that inspired a whole genre of its own? Read more
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Peter B. Kaufman’s rigorous and eloquent new book, The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge, traces the history of this dream of open access to knowledge. It “begins with torture and ends with a vision of another violent civil war. There’s some gun violence, some beheadings, tanks rolling over people, something for everyone.” A recurring problem is the concentration of power. “Archive,” as Kaufman points out, derives from “rule” or “govern,” in the “archon,” the seat of power. Governance and trading require knowledge, so in that sense all economies have been information economies, with all the associated pitfalls. Thus, release of closely guarded information into the public commons is a source of mortal danger to those in power. Read more
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