Books
‘Leeches’ a Powerful Meditation on Limitations of Language
“Leeches” emerges from its entanglement with Serbian politics as a powerful postmodernist struggle with the impotence and emptiness of language.
Comics Artists Discuss Islam
This Friday, April 29, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., the Center for Middle Eastern Studies will host “Islam, the ...
Australian Laureate Murray Meditates on Nature and Dialect
In his 1999 poem “The Instruments,” Australian poet Les Murray wrote, “Poetry is read by lovers of poetry / and ...
Wallace’s Unfinished Novel Assesses Metaphysical Accounts
Damage is the natural condition of American culture and society in the fiction of David Foster Wallace. This damage takes ...
Komunyakaa Creates Bizarre, Beautiful World in ‘Couch’
Some poets perform an act of creation that supersedes the poem as a mere vessel for thought or emotion. Instead, ...
‘Double Shadow’ Presents a New Way to Pray
“No, we are not beyond beauty,” the poet Carl Phillips ’81 once said in an interview. “I was out working ...
Rollicking ‘Pym’ Revitalizes Satire and Adventure Genres
As an adventure novel "Pym" is wildly successful: the plot almost moves itself along, and its lack of detail may be a necessary cost.
Over-the-Top Novel Chronicles Sex Strike in Suburbia
The plot, which centers around a mysterious curse that causes a town’s women to shun their husbands and boyfriends sexually, might sound like the makings of horror to some.
'Mr. Chartwell' Offers Innovative Take on Depression
Misery loves company—so the saying goes, but the opposite is true in Rebecca Hunt’s debut novel, “Mr. Chartwell.”
Wolitzer Discusses Modern Gender Dynamics
In author Meg Wolitzer’s latest novel, “The Uncoupling,” the women in an American town begin to lose interest in their men after a local high school performs Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata,” a comedy featuring a revolt instigated by women.
'Our Bodies, Ourselves' Turns 40
Students gathered in Austin Hall at Harvard Law School yesterday to hear the founding members of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective talk about the history and legacy of their book, “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”
Bezmozgis Offers Uninspired Take on Immigrant Experience
For a few decades in the middle of the last century, American fiction featured a strong Jewish voice, world-weary yet wisecracking, in which unconcern—even disgust—toward the world coexisted with fascination with its linguistic and philosophical possibilities. With his existential emphasis, the Jew became the everyman; though the Jewish immigrant now rarely appears as a novelistic protagonist, a great nostalgia for his brand of schmerz persists.
Novelist Harding Recalls Fighting to Write
“If I wanted to write,” Harding said, “I had to fight for it. So I just couldn’t be precious. I couldn’t flip my scarf and say, ‘The muse didn’t show up today.’ No ... I’m always writing in my brain.”
Pulitizer Prize winner Paul Harding speaks about writing
Pulitzer Prize winner and former Expos preceptor Paul Harding speaks about his award-winning book Tinkers and the writing process in Fong Auditorium in Bolyston Hall on Tuesday, March 29. Harding also discusses the long journey that he took to become a prominent author as well as offers valuable advice and insight to aspiring writers, poets, and other artists.
'The Art' of Puzzling, Fascinating Corporate Satire
Elusive French writer Georges Perec may have died in 1982, but thanks to the recent reissue of an oft-forgotten literary experiment from his later years, his humor and his cunning live again.
Promised Land
The Harvard Book Store and Harvard Hillel host fiction writers Elisa Albert, Rachel Kadish, Joan Leegant, Tova Mirvis, and Jonathan Wilson to read from their stories in the new anthology, Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging.
Monk's Quirky Characters Never Transcend Silliness
To be fair, not all of “Nude Walker” is painfully cliché. It does, after all, have a scene in which a naked schizophrenic—the main character’s mother—struts around rural Pennsylvania bedecked with little more than a handbag and red lipstick.
Boyle Predicts a Dark Future 'When the Killing's Done'
“When the Killing’s Done,” is like a relic from days of yore. Here is an intelligent novel that not only succeeds as a work of fiction, but also aims to raise cultural awareness about the fine distinctions between environmental conservation movements.