Breaking free of the frenetic pace of criticisms on social media, Sujatha Fernandes takes her time to explain the dubious politics of Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt in the Sydney Review of Books.
Amid the backlash to Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt, and the praise for Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, David Kurnick probes the politics and rhetoric of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season.
In the Sydney Review of Books, James Ley reviews Lydia Davis’ Essays with an eye towards the way it mirrors, rather than breaks with, Davis’ short fictions.
With New Directions reissuing Heinrich von Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas, in a fresh translation by Michael Hofmann, Dustin Illingworth makes the case that the novella is “the book that made the novel modern”.
Gary Lutz’s Complete Works are the subject of a first-rate analysis and appraisal by Ange Mlinko in the latest London Review of Books. Mlinko’s essay is equal parts career retrospective and close, close reading.
Liam Bishop reviews Zigmunds Skujiņš’ Flesh-Coloured Dominoes (trans. Kaija Straumanis).
The Anna Kavan renaissance continues, this time in the United States with thanks to back catalogue reissues from NYRB Classics. At Full Stop, Josh Vigil joins in the Kavan appreciation.
Katie da Cunha Lewin reviews Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto.
Daniel Green reviews Nicolette Polek’s Imaginary Museums.