Aaron Matz | The New York Review of Books

All of Us Yahoos

A new history of satire wants to limit the genre to its political ramifications, but satirists are often interested in the whole person and their capacity for vice.

State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature

by Dan Sperrin

March 26, 2026 issue

Flaubert’s Planet

Do novelists, and their readers, bear some responsibility for the climate crisis?

The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis

by Amitav Ghosh

Literature for a Changing Planet

by Martin Puchner

The Nature of Tomorrow: A History of the Environmental Future

by Michael Rawson

July 21, 2022 issue

Inheriting Hunger

Émile Zola’s monumental twenty-novel cycle encompasses nearly every sphere of French society, but returns repeatedly to people with a bottomless compulsion to dominate others.

His Excellency Eugène Rougon

by Émile Zola, translated from the French and with an introduction and notes by Brian Nelson

The Sin of Abbé Mouret

by Émile Zola, translated from the French and with an introduction and notes by Valerie Minogue

Nana

by Émile Zola, translated from the French by Helen Constantine, with an introduction and notes by Brian Nelson

February 11, 2021 issue