Volume 68, Number 9 (2021-05-27)

Sigrid Nunez

‘Lost, at Sea, at Odds’

Jhumpa Lahiri wrote her new novel in Italian, her adopted language, but the greater challenge in Whereabouts was to write about a chronic depressive with seemingly no deep passions or significant relationships.

Whereabouts

by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated from the Italian by the author

Jessica T. Mathews

Losing No Time

In his first hundred days President Biden has been bold, decisive, and willing to take risks in his foreign policy judgments, but his early mistakes on Iran and Taiwan may have dangerous consequences.

Adam Shatz

A Blues Surrealist

Julius Hemphill’s music uses stark, lyrical abstraction and svelte dissonances to confront the vicissitudes of black American life.

The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony

archival recordings by Julius Hemphill, with Malinké Elliott, K. Curtis Lyle, Abdul Wadud, Baikida Carroll, John Carter, Olu Dara, Nels Cline, Allan Jaffe, Jehri Riley, Jack Wilkins, Jerome Harris, Dave Holland, Steuart Liebig, Roberto Miranda, Michael Carvin, Alex Cline, Jack DeJohnette, Philip Wilson, Ursula Oppens, Daedalus String Quartet, Ray Anderson, Marty Ehrlich, Janet Grice, John Purcell, and Bruce Purse

Michael Gorra

Promise Miscarried

Christine Smallwood’s The Life of the Mind is a campus novel equally obsessed with the life of the body and with the precariousness of academic life.

The Life of the Mind

by Christine Smallwood

Michael Kazin

Ending the Kennedy Romance

The first volume of Frederik Logevall’s biography of JFK reveals the scope of his ambition and the weakness of his political commitments.

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956

by Fredrik Logevall

Irina Dumitrescu

Don’t Get Too Comfortable

Eula Biss’s Having and Being Had is a collection of brief essays about how a person navigates the moral dilemmas of ownership and privilege.

Having and Being Had

by Eula Biss

Whitney Cox

Lovesick for a God

A new translation of the Tiruvāymoli vividly reveals the inner life of a devotee enraptured by Vishnu’s presence and made desperate by his absence.

Endless Song: Tiruvāymoli

by Nammālvār, translated from the Tamil by Archana Venkatesan, with a foreword by David Shulman

Ariel Dorfman

A Taxonomy of Tyrants

Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen delineates what the last century’s macho dictators have had in common.

Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Adam Zagajewski,
Clare Cavanagh

Santiago de Compostela

a poem

Rachel Polonsky

Russian Metamorphoses

Teffi’s supernatural tales ask what we can understand about the nature of events, and about the transformative moments that thread events together into stories.

Other Worlds: Pilgrims, Peasants, Spirits, Saints

by Teffi, edited by Robert Chandler and translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, and others

Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me: The Best of Teffi

edited by Robert Chandler and Anne Marie Jackson and translated from the Russian by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Rose France, and Anne Marie Jackson

Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

by Teffi, translated from the Russian by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson, and Irina Steinberg, with an introduction by Edythe Haber

Alan Rusbridger

Two Centuries of ‘The Guardian’

There have been both lean and comfortable times over the decades, but the paper has held its editorial nerve.

Anna Della Subin

The Rules of the Confidence Game

The Book of Charlatans provides an unusual glimpse into the street life of medieval Islamic societies rarely captured in more elevated Arabic literary sources.

The Book of Charlatans

by Jamal al-Din ‘Abd al-Rahim al-Jawbari, edited by Manuela Dengler and translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies

Rae Armantrout

It

a poem

Alan Hollinghurst

A Snob’s Progress

A new edition of Henry “Chips” Channon’s diaries gives fascinating glimpses of homosocial desire in a hectic narrative of aristocratic and political life.

The Diaries: 1918–38

by Henry “Chips” Channon, edited by Simon Heffer