Books
This invaluable addition to the Austen literature offers two for the price of one: a beautifully designed and printed edition of the novel many consider her best and a parallel critical commentary that deepens our understanding and opens up a rich, textured view of her world and time.
Read MoreThe people of Annawadi live in conditions so bleak that “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” evoked, for one Indian reviewer, Primo Levi’s depiction of life in concentration camps.
Read MoreIn light of the many translations of Cyprian Norwid’s verse into English, Danuta Borchardt thought carefully about what she was going to focus on.
Read MoreSome fiction can, literally, have the smell of too much research. And so, although I admire the ambition and scope of Audrey Schulman’s new novel, “Three Weeks in December,” I also feel that she made things harder for herself than she needed to.
Read MoreElegantly written, cogently argued, and filled with trenchant artistic analyses, Alexander Marr’s book exemplifies interdisciplinary studies at their best.
Read MoreThis is a book for anyone interested not just in the economic state of the symphony orchestra, but in the overall financial health of the arts in the United States.
Read MoreItalian writer Niccolò Ammaniti usually writes with an unadorned style about moral predicaments of the young in small-town Italy. “Me and You,” a slender effort in all respects, covers this ground as well, with the difference that fourteen-year-old protagonist Lorenzo Cumi is from an affluent Roman family.
Read MoreIn “Art,” playwright Yasmina Reza uses theater to explore how powerfully we defend our fears and rationalizations.
Read MoreCertainly part of the power of Tomas Tranströmer’s poetry resides in how, having established a jagged consciousness, he leaves us in between—in a world full of questions that are not easily resolved.
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Arts Commentary: Rich in Creativity — But Nothing Else