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★★★★☆ Ted Chiang’s second collection of stories, Exhalation, reads like curious thought experiments in narrative form. The stories are science-heavy (unique concepts like blue shift, multiverse theory, and entropy inform each plot), and Chiang’s...
★★★★☆ Chinese dissident author Ma Jian’s latest novel is a scathing satire panning Xi Jinping, but it will be tough for people living under Xi’s regime to get a copy of the book. Ma’s...
★★★★☆ We’ve all occasionally fantasized about penetrating some ultimate inner circle, being born into the right era and the right place so that any possible “fear of missing out” is a distant nonentity. T.C....
★★★★☆ A controlled, experimental novel about local folklore and the way we communicate, Max Porter’s Lanny is an impressive follow-up to his highly-acclaimed 2016 debut Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. Set in a...
★★☆☆☆ “You can’t be a non-conformist if you don’t drink coffee,” the South Park goth kids famously told Stan during his cultural initiation. Molly Dektar’s debut novel The Ash Family invokes the same paradox...
★★★★☆ Daša Drndić’s final novel EEG is a hypnotic and challenging treatise about trauma and history and the importance of painful remembrance. Originally published in 2016 (two years before her death) and translated from...
★★★★★ Ali Smith’s Spring is one of the great literary achievements of 2019: it is a novel of vitality in every sense of the word, as energetic and lively as it is timely and...
★★★★☆ As a reader, I’m calibrated by default toward artful, literary prose, but then a particularly talented writer with a spare style comes along and rocks my boat in the best possible way. Korean...
★★★★☆ Even at their most monumental, Louise Bourgeois’ spider sculptures somehow feel nimble. At their largest, they tower to heights of thirty feet, and, cast in bronze, must boast a remarkable weight. Yet somehow,...
