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The frolicking of sailors aboard a ship’s deck reminds Herman Melville of young horses, which might lead him to the “gambols” of whales. In associations such as these, Melville shows us the incongruities and false gilding we add to life in order to make it more palatable, less terrifying.
We could try to protect ourselves at this time from dread, despair, and our own fury; or, like Ross Gay, we could seek delight, and find through it a doorway into engagement in the world, painful as it might be.
Porochista Khakpour’s essay collection is a fearless reflection of an immigrant searching for home and for herself.
Francisco’s newest book, presented simultaneously in English and Spanish, is that of a young poet matured, leaning into the naturalist observations present in his previous work and writing haiku with the precision and wisdom of a sure-handed veteran—while infusing them with a trademark sardonic wit.
In her satirical critique of the patriarchy in which she imagines a new, feminist society, Hossain’s 1905 short story “Sultana’s Dream” alludes to some of the most pressing contemporary global crises—epidemic disease, human displacement, overdependence on non-renewable energy, militarization of local police forces and the carceral mindset.
Jenn Shapland’s lyrical debut demonstrates how she has been made by, and has remade, her hero Carson McCullers—and how this relationship between writer and subject is at the heart of every biography, and every memoir.
Does information protect or imprison us? Tracy O’Neill’s highly-anticipated second novel—part suspense story, part relationship drama and part commentary on the perils of our interconnected epoch—explores a world in which the truth is hard to determine, and even harder to prove.
E.M. Forster’s novel is deeply concerned with compactly contained relationships, as well as the ideas and spaces that forge these connections. Zadie Smith’s modern-day retelling explores similarly contained personal relationships with a significant update: the book is set on a college campus.
Burns’s new novel resurrects the experience of women in Appalachia rather than letting their stories be buried while their husbands’s live on.
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