Anahid Nersessian

Nobody’s Grand Tour

Michael Lentz’s novel Schattenfroh portrays a dystopia in which consciousness itself is just another commodity.

How Can I Help You?

The hypocrisies of our social contract are exposed in John Tottenham’s hilarious debut novel about a wage worker in a bookstore.

Acts of Self-Erasure

A new exhibition of the conceptual artist Christine Kozlov shows how she worked by concealing her own tracks.

A Living Requiem

In her new installation, the sculptor Nour Mobarak transforms the hymns of the powerful into the complaints of the weak.

Speaking the Unspeakable

The Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah asks what it would mean—aesthetically, morally, politically—to write a good poem about genocide.   

The Secret Agent

Rachel Kushner’s fourth novel tells the story of a spy-for-hire who infiltrates the ranks of a radical French commune.

Refusing the Eye

In Simone Leigh’s sculptures, strange and contingent details redirect the viewer’s gaze.

Wanting for Nothing

Constance Debré’s novels, whose sensibility is minimalist and at times even desolate, reject the expectations of personal growth that animate much feminist literature.

The Channeler

Episode Four of “The Critic and Her Publics”

Transmissions from Another World

The first collections of Annelyse Gelman and Elisa Gonzalez are haunted by grief and confront the question of whether lyric poetry still offers something no other medium can.

Gray Area

Poems to Wake the Corpses

Joyce Mansour, the Syrian-Jewish writer whom André Breton called “the greatest poet of our time,” is the latest female member of the Surrealist circle to be reintroduced to the public.

The Republic of Translation

Two new translations of poetry travel from ancient Sardinia to modern Paris.

The Couple Form

Two new poetry collections embrace the potential of traditional forms and of breaking away from them.

Reckoning with Silence

Dionne Brand’s poetry has the weight and sonority of prophetic utterance without a hint of melodrama.

The Hunter

Björk has always been a techno-utopian, and the environmentalist strain in her music has only grown more pronounced over time.

A Vivisectional Style

A new biography of John Donne argues for the sensuality and strangeness of both his work and his life.

Creature Comforts

Lena Dunham’s Catherine Called Birdy brings to boisterous life Karen Cushman’s novel of medieval girlhood.

LA Elegies

Two poets take up meter and rhyme to consider the city of Blade Runner and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Catastrophic Desires

The intention behind Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry, particularly her erotic poetry, was not just to express herself but to match the complexities of twentieth-century life.