Despite its flaws, Louise Penny’s latest novel is ultimately a book of fundamental human goodness. It encourages us to look at a child, as happens at a significant New Year’s Eve moment, and not see “Down syndrome,” but a person with a name—a person given for us to love. Continue Reading »
Rooney’s decision not to publish her books in Hebrew isn’t really about Israel or its policies at all. It’s about the meaning of culture, how it should be produced and consumed, and who and what it should serve. Continue Reading »
To say that Don DeLillo dislikes television would be an understatement. He actually seems to think it’s imperiling our souls. DeLillo’s novel White Noise—which won the National Book Award in 1985 and secured his reputation as one of the best contemporary American writers—was . . . . Continue Reading »
In 1980, the soldiers of the Third Reich took Bolivia. After the huge tank battles that had brought about the final victory in Europe, South America was something more like a police operation—in fact, the conquest of the country was led not by the Wehrmacht, but by a Hauptsturmführer of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Last December, while most of us were watching the presidential election lumber toward its disastrous conclusion, two aged representatives of a very different political era died. One of the deceased was David Cornwell, better known as John le Carré, the pen name he used while writing novels set in . . . . Continue Reading »