Rachel Donadio

A Student of Power

In his experiences and chronicles of the great ideological battles of the twentieth century, Curzio Malaparte was a shape-shifter—pitiless, clinical, cynical, unsentimental, indifferent to morality and idealism.

Unsinkable Paris

The spirit of celebration on the streets of Paris during the Olympics was all the more meaningful to those of us who had lived through so many of the city’s darker recent chapters.

Meloni’s Cultural Revolution

What changes has Italy’s far-right prime minister wrought?

Escaping Biography

Nathalie Sarraute sought to free the novel from old narrative conventions and refused to admit the relevance of her own experience—as a woman, as a Jew—to her writing.

France: After Lockdown, the Street

Over the course of a long, strange April—during which France recorded nearly 20,000 Covid-19 deaths—something had shifted.

Italy’s Great, Mysterious Storyteller

The epic novels of Elena Ferrante