Books
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A Historical Novel That Is Also a Mash-Up of the Centuries
Adam Thirlwell’s “The Future Future” follows a 19-year-old socialite through a prerevolutionary Paris that looks suspiciously like our present day.
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Did the C.I.A. Kill Patrice Lumumba?
In “The Lumumba Plot,” the Foreign Affairs editor Stuart A. Reid asks whether the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in…
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A Russian Journalist’s Love Letter to Her People
“I Love Russia,” a collection of Elena Kostyuchenko’s reporting over the past 15 years, captures the lives of ordinary, often…
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A History of Chinese Food, and a Sensory Feast
Fuchsia Dunlop’s “Invitation to a Banquet” is a cultural investigation of an impossibly broad and often misunderstood cuisine.
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Teju Cole Knows His New Novel Resembles Autofiction. Please Don’t Be Tempted.
“Tremor,” his first novel in over a decade, is set in Massachusetts and Lagos, and came from a desire to…
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When Roz Chast Closes Her Eyes, Chris Rock and Nasty Babies Open Theirs
In “I Must Be Dreaming,” the cartoonist serves up nutty nocturnal admissions, considers theories of sleep and, yes, imagines losing…
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The Essential Vladimir Nabokov
People who dislike Vladimir Nabokov tend to find his dexterity stressful, like watching a circus performer juggle torches for hours.…
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Five Louise Glück Poems to Get You Started
The American writer, who won a Nobel Prize in 2020, wrote with cool clarity and often puckish wit.
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The Wife Has Committed Murder but It’s the Husband Who Scares Her Lawyer
In Marie NDiaye’s new novel, “Vengeance Is Mine,” a woman is haunted by a decades-old trauma she feels, but cannot…
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In the Beginning Were the Word Nerds
Sarah Ogilvie’s sprightly “The Dictionary People” pays tribute to the explorers, suffragists, murderers and ordinary citizens who helped create the…