To read this novel is to tally a high school yearbook’s worth of superlatives for Shteyngart: funniest, noisiest, sweetest, most entertaining. To those I will add a few superlatives that were not celebrated at my own high school: most melancholic, most quizzical, most skilled at vibrating the deepest strings of the anthropoid heart. Read more
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This bildungsroman from philosopher de Beauvoir (1908–1986), written in 1956 and only recently published in France, runs on verve, wit, and pathos mediated through the lens of an enigmatic friendship … The trailblazing feminist writes bracingly of the complexity of female friendships. Beauvoir’s mastery of fiction further demonstrates her bravura. Read more
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