Ruth Franklin
How Queer Is “Frankenstein”?
Three novelists reimagine Mary Shelley’s life and loves and her most famous creation.
Literature’s Most Controversial Nobel Laureate
Peter Handke’s defenders argue that his views on Serbia are extraneous to his literary achievement, but a close reading of his output suggests otherwise.
A Cautionary Tale About Science Raises Uncomfortable Questions About Fiction
Benjamín Labatut’s Sebaldian “When We Cease to Understand the World” grapples with science’s moral quandaries, but what is real and what is imagined?
How Paul Celan Reconceived Language for a Post-Holocaust World
His poems, now translated into English in their entirety, are an invitation to a new kind of reading.
A “Beowulf” for Our Moment
Maria Dahvana Headley’s revisionist translation infuses the Old English poem with feminism and social-media slang.
Olga Tokarczuk’s Novels Against Nationalism
In the face of the Polish government’s rightist dogma, the country’s preëminent writer explores its history of ethnic intermingling.
How Should Children’s Books Deal with the Holocaust?
While Jane Yolen’s latest work has points in common with her previous Holocaust novels, it reflects the way the genre she helped to create has changed.
What Mary Oliver’s Critics Don’t Understand
For America’s most beloved poet, paying attention to nature is a springboard to the sacred.
Jerzy Kosinski’s Traumas, Real and Invented
Jerome Charyn’s “Jerzy” is a moving attempt to trace the connections between Kosinski’s wartime struggles and postwar fictions.
“The Lottery” Letters
A torrent of mail arrived at The New Yorker in the wake of Shirley Jackson’s short story—the most the magazine had ever received in response to a work of fiction.
How Queer Is “Frankenstein”?
Three novelists reimagine Mary Shelley’s life and loves and her most famous creation.
Literature’s Most Controversial Nobel Laureate
Peter Handke’s defenders argue that his views on Serbia are extraneous to his literary achievement, but a close reading of his output suggests otherwise.
A Cautionary Tale About Science Raises Uncomfortable Questions About Fiction
Benjamín Labatut’s Sebaldian “When We Cease to Understand the World” grapples with science’s moral quandaries, but what is real and what is imagined?
How Paul Celan Reconceived Language for a Post-Holocaust World
His poems, now translated into English in their entirety, are an invitation to a new kind of reading.
A “Beowulf” for Our Moment
Maria Dahvana Headley’s revisionist translation infuses the Old English poem with feminism and social-media slang.
Olga Tokarczuk’s Novels Against Nationalism
In the face of the Polish government’s rightist dogma, the country’s preëminent writer explores its history of ethnic intermingling.
How Should Children’s Books Deal with the Holocaust?
While Jane Yolen’s latest work has points in common with her previous Holocaust novels, it reflects the way the genre she helped to create has changed.
What Mary Oliver’s Critics Don’t Understand
For America’s most beloved poet, paying attention to nature is a springboard to the sacred.
Jerzy Kosinski’s Traumas, Real and Invented
Jerome Charyn’s “Jerzy” is a moving attempt to trace the connections between Kosinski’s wartime struggles and postwar fictions.
“The Lottery” Letters
A torrent of mail arrived at The New Yorker in the wake of Shirley Jackson’s short story—the most the magazine had ever received in response to a work of fiction.