Adam Kirsch | The New York Review of Books

Things Fall Apart

Gabriele Tergit’s Effingers chronicles how one prosperous German Jewish family struggled to answer the question: When is it time to leave?

Effingers

by Gabriele Tergit, translated from the German by Sophie Duvernoy

February 12, 2026 issue

The Apolitical Life

The philosopher Giorgio Agamben exalts an ideal of what he calls “inoperativity”—a kind of passivity as an antidote to the West’s politics of power and domination.

Self-Portrait in the Studio

by Giorgio Agamben, translated from the Italian by Kevin Attell

December 4, 2025 issue

In Search of Fullness

In his new book, the philosopher Charles Taylor looks at modern poetry as a unique record of spiritual experience in a secular age.

Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment

by Charles Taylor

December 5, 2024 issue

Intolerable Freedoms

The Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Three Colors” trilogy darkly anticipated some of the central conflicts of the post–cold war period.

Three Colors: Blue, White, and Red

a trilogy of films written and directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski, and cowritten by Krzysztof Piesiewicz

October 19, 2023 issue

Arias of Despair

What can opera elicit from The Hours that the page and the screen cannot?

The Hours

an opera by Kevin Puts, with a libretto by Greg Pierce, at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, November 22–December 15, 2022

February 9, 2023 issue

Benjamin’s Rival Tempters

The correspondence of Theodor Adorno and Gershom Scholem reveals that despite their intellectual differences, their shared mission to preserve Walter Benjamin’s work led to a genuine fondness between them.

Correspondence, 1939–1969

by Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem, edited and with an introduction by Asaf Angermann, translated from the German by Paula Schwebel and Sebastian Truskolaski

June 9, 2022 issue

Black Voices, German Song

What did German listeners hear when African American singers performed Schubert or Brahms?

Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms

by Kira Thurman

February 10, 2022 issue

Turbulent Music, Turbulent Life

Lewis Lockwood’s survey of the history of Beethoven biography shows that our understanding of the music has always been profoundly shaped by the stories we tell about the man.

Beethoven’s Lives: The Biographical Tradition

by Lewis Lockwood

September 23, 2021 issue

The Symbolic Animal

The philosopher Ernst Cassirer’s most timely insight is that even in a scientific age, people are prone to magical, mystical thinking.

The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 1: Language

by Ernst Cassirer, translated from the German by Steve G. Lofts, with a foreword by Peter E. Gordon

The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 2: Mythical Thinking

by Ernst Cassirer, translated from the German by Steve G. Lofts, with a foreword by Peter E. Gordon

The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 3: Phenomenology of Cognition

by Ernst Cassirer, translated from the German by Steve G. Lofts, with a foreword by Peter E. Gordon

April 8, 2021 issue

The People’s Novel

Peter Weiss makes a passionate case that for the poor, communism offered access to spiritual and intellectual realms from which they had historically been excluded.

The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume 1

by Peter Weiss, translated from the German by Joachim Neugroschel, with a foreword by Fredric Jameson and a glossary by Robert Cohen

The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume 2

by Peter Weiss, translated from the German by Joel Scott, with an afterword by Jürgen Schutte

January 14, 2021 issue

Chekhov’s Laughter

Fifty-Two Stories: 1883–1898

by Anton Chekhov, translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

September 24, 2020 issue

Resisting English

The work of Minae Mizumura

The Fall of Language in the Age of English

by Minae Mizumura, translated from the Japanese by Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters Carpenter

A True Novel

by Minae Mizumura, translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter in collaboration with the author

Inheritance from Mother

by Minae Mizumura, translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter in collaboration with the author

October 24, 2019 issue

Primal Visions

Moods

by Yoel Hoffmann, translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole

Curriculum Vitae

by Yoel Hoffmann, translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole

The Shunra and the Schmetterling

by Yoel Hoffmann, translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole

The Heart Is Katmandu

by Yoel Hoffmann, translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole

The Christ of Fish

by Yoel Hoffmann, translated from the Hebrew by Eddie Levenston

Bernhard

by Yoel Hoffmann, translated from the Hebrew by Alan Treister with Eddie Levenston

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December 6, 2018 issue

Zionist Regrets

Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah

by David Biale

Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back

by Noam Zadoff, translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey Green

Greetings from Angelus: Poems

by Gershom Scholem, translated from the German by Richard Sieburth, with an introduction and annotations by Steven M. Wasserstrom

The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem

edited by Marie Luise Knott and translated from the German by Anthony David

Werner Scholem: A German Life

by Mirjam Zadoff, translated from the German by Dona Geyer

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June 28, 2018 issue

Stuff of Scandal

Klimt and Schiele: Drawn

an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, February 25–May 28, 2018

Klimt and Schiele: Drawings

by Katie Hanson

May 10, 2018 issue

Classical Cancan

Jacques Offenbach and the Making of Modern Culture

by Laurence Senelick

The Real “Tales of Hoffmann”: Origin, History, and Restoration of an Operatic Masterpiece

by Vincent Giroud and Michael Kaye, with a foreword by Plácido Domingo

Les contes d’Hoffmann

an opera by Jacques Offenbach, directed by Bartlett Sher, at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, September 26–October 28, 2017

January 18, 2018 issue

Ironists of a Vanished Empire

Marjorie Perloff’s ‘Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire’

Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire

by Marjorie Perloff

June 22, 2017 issue

What Does Handke Demand?

March 23, 2017 issue

The Stranger in Love

The Moravian Night: A Story

by Peter Handke, translated from the German by Krishna Winston

February 9, 2017 issue

Letter

Scott Abbott

What Does Handke Demand?

March 23, 2017 issue

Trilling’s Letters

November 10, 2016 issue