“Why do we want our characters to be innocent, as if we are innocent ourselves?”
Tag: Knopf
B-Sides: Haruki Murakami’s “After the Quake”
How, Murakami asks, can community after the earthquake be structured around self-reflection rather than cruelty?
Graciela Mochkofsky on “The Prophet of the Andes”
In this latest episode of the Writing Latinos podcast, we discuss how a new book shatters preconceptions about religion in the Americas.
The Stories Women Tell of Loneliness
“I have an appetite for silence,” Emily Dickinson wrote, for “silence is infinity.” But are women today relishing in their solitude?
McCarthy’s Perpetual Motion Scam
Tom McCarthy hasn’t evaded the literary brand: if you continually say nothing, “saying nothing” becomes what you, the novelist, say.
On Our Nightstands: January 2022
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
The “I” in Murakami
Discussing Murakami within the Japanese literary tradition is in itself rare. He is, by his own admission, less well-loved in Japan than abroad.
Art and Culture in Schorske’s Century
With decades of creativity—that ended with World War I—Vienna jolted Western art and culture forward into high modernity. But how?
On Our Nightstands: July 2021
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
A Collapse No One Story Can Tell
Ten years since the 2011 Syrian uprising, there has been a veritable literary boom of fiction writing from Syria. What does it reveal?
A Messy Utopia Is All We Might Get
Climate change didn’t just wreck the planet; it closed off and reshaped the future. Even utopia—if we reach it—will be a mess.
Past Dictators Never Die
What happens when a regime founded upon exclusion, racism, nationalism, and an authoritarian leader ends? In Spain, such a regime never really ended.
Who Killed Nordic Noir?
Scandinavian crime novels once showed how society failed its citizens. Today, the genre innovates differently—by depicting more violence.
What Birders Don’t See
Rather than studying birds—and birders—in isolation, the time has come to see both as linked to the crises of racism and climate change.
On Our Nightstands: September 2020
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
All Tomorrow’s Warnings
Both left and right employ “speculative nonfiction” to imagine the world after climate change. But who will win the battle of the futurists?
The Spy Who Read Me
Women writing about women spies who are, themselves, writing. What’s next for women’s espionage writing?
Public Picks 2020
Each year around this time we send our readers into summer with a thoughtfully curated list of the titles appearing over the past 12 months that dazzled, moved, and challenged us most.
On Our Nightstands: April 2020
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
Lessons from Haiti on Living and Dying
If he had to write The Black Jacobins again, C. L. R. James “would only give Toussaint [Louverture] a walk-on part.”