Randy Boyagoda

For about three years, I read fiction on my phone. I’d never done so before, and I haven’t since. I had to, during this period, because my wife and I were working our way through “The Neapolitan Quartet,” a series of novels by the Italian writer Elena Ferrante. The books were so readable . . . . Continue Reading »

In the opening lines of Cold Warriors, Duncan White notes that “between February and May 1955, a group covertly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency launched a secret weapon into Communist territory”: balloons carrying copies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. This was perhaps the . . . . Continue Reading »

A conversation between novelist Randy Boyagoda and Doug Sikkema on Christian writing.  Continue Reading »

I finished teaching a university course in faith and ideas a little while ago by administering individual oral exams to forty first-year students. The exams took place in a hotel bar overlooking a volcanic lake. The pope’s summer palace shone in the distance, and the Mediterranean gleamed . . . . Continue Reading »

Future Home of the Living Godby louise erdrichharpercollins, 288 pages, $28.99 Never trust the teller, trust the tale,” D. H. Lawrence famously declared. Keep that in mind when it comes to Louise Erdrich and her new novel, Future Home of the Living God. In an interview about her latest work, she . . . . Continue Reading »

2084: The End of the World by boualem sansal translated by alison anderson europa editions, 240 pages, $17 Sleep soundly, good people, everything is sheer falsehood, and the rest is under control.” So begins Boualem Sansal’s new novel, 2084. The author, an Algerian secularist, has . . . . Continue Reading »

Exporting Freedom: Religious Liberty and American Power by anna su harvard, 296 pages, $39.95 Anna Su’s study of U.S. efforts to promote religious freedom abroad from 1898 through the present ends as it begins. In the Philippines in the early twentieth century and again in Iraq in the . . . . Continue Reading »

When the woman came for our daughters, we were crowded around a small round metal table, eating damp French fries and day-old bagels. It was early evening, and we’d had a long day, and now another stranger was giving my wife a piece of paper. Was this yet another petition to sign? A cool Catholic . . . . Continue Reading »

Go Set a Watchman by harper lee harpercollins, 288 pages, $27.99 It might be the greatest American literary controversy of recent years: In summer 2015, ­millions of excited readers discovered to their great dismay ugly racial elements in Harper Lee’s new/old novel, Go Set a Watchman. But this . . . . Continue Reading »

The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915–1964 by zachary leader knopf, 832 pages, $40 Saul Bellow had a cat named Rufus. He learned from Ralph Ellison how to make drip coffee—though, according to his new biographer, the “elaborate procedure” that Ellison taught him “was hard to . . . . Continue Reading »