Literature
Page-Turner
Percival Everett’s Philosophical Reply to “Huckleberry Finn”
In his new novel, “James,” Everett explores how an emblem of American slavery can write himself into being.
Critics at Large
The New Coming-of-Age Story
Vinson Cunningham discusses his début novel, “Great Expectations,” a bildungsroman that captures a particular moment in American life—and that offers some clues about where the genre is heading.
Critics at Large
Why We Love an Office Drama
From Adelle Waldman’s novel “Help Wanted” to the sci-fi-inflected Apple TV+ show “Severance,” fictional depictions of work are getting darker, or at least stranger. What can the state of the workplace in art tell us about the workplace in life?
The New Yorker Interview
Helen Oyeyemi Thinks We Should Read More and Stay in Touch Less
The author talks about travel, letters you shouldn’t open, and how she chose Prague as the setting for her latest novel.
Page-Turner
The Bartender and the Lost Literary Masterpiece
How a Manchester native rescued “Caliban Shrieks,” Jack Hilton’s working-class opus.
Daily Comment
The Second Death of Pablo Neruda
Why everything about Chile’s national poet has come into question.
The Political Scene Podcast
The Oscar Nominee Cord Jefferson on Why Race Is So “Fertile” for Comedy
“American Fiction,” nominated for five Academy Awards, satirizes the literary world, and upends Hollywood conventions about Blackness.
2023 in Review
The Year in Reading
New Yorker writers on favorite books from past years that they discovered in 2023.
Essay
When Your Own Book Gets Caught Up in the Censorship Wars
I had envisioned book bans as modern morality plays—but the reality was far more complicated.
Page-Turner
For a Hungry Book Critic, Every Word Is a Feast
In “The Upstairs Delicatessen,” the Times writer Dwight Garner masterfully melds the pleasures of reading and eating.
Cultural Comment
If Peace Were a Prize
If the world of fable teaches us anything, it’s that even our most precious values are contingent, or won at great cost.
Under Review
Marie NDiaye’s Drama of Exclusion and Revenge
“Vengeance Is Mine” is a story of class conflict in the guise of a psychological thriller.
Persons of Interest
The Startling Candor of Helen Garner
One of Australia’s most beloved writers, Garner—who has published novels, nonfiction, and three volumes of diaries—is finally catching on in the U.S.
Under Review
The Longest, Least-Remembered Great American Novel
In “Miss MacIntosh, My Darling,” Marguerite Young held a mirror to the country’s ambition, delusion, and insatiable quest for perfection.
Cultural Comment
Confessions of an Audiobook Addict
It’s both strange and enlightening to move through the world with an author’s voice filling your ears.
Page-Turner
Terry Bisson’s History of the Future
For more than two decades, one of pulp sci-fi’s masters has delivered headlines from a time line defined by the absurd.
Cultural Comment
Jon Fosse, the Nobel Prize, and the Art of What Can’t Be Named
In his novels and plays, the Norwegian author has continually probed the limits of the perceptible world.
Page-Turner
The 2023 National Book Awards Longlist: Fiction
Several books center on violent attempts to impose hierarchies of race or belief.
Page-Turner
The 2023 National Book Awards Longlist: Nonfiction
Several works on the list mine documents from the past in order to forge new meaning.
Page-Turner
The 2023 National Book Awards Longlist: Translated Literature
Five titles on this year’s longlist are set in Latin American countries.