Archive
Open Letters Monthly Archive Feature: Second Glance
Readers are familiar with the uncompromising dissections of Apartheid South Africa in J.M. Coetzee’s Booker winners Disgrace and Life and Times of Michael K, but Greg Gerke wants us to be equally aware of the haunting vision of Coetzee’s 1990 novel Age of Iron
Read MoreHe wrote over 40 novels, many of which are classics, and that sheer quantity can be daunting. Rohan Maitzen tells us how best to approach the literary dynamo that was Anthony Trollope.
Read MoreShe was a bestseller in her day, now virtually unknown. Fanny Burney, and her great novel Evelina, gets some long-deserved attention from Tracey Kelly.
Read MoreYou may have passed over Frederick Busch’s many novels on bookstore shelves; Brad Jones convinces you to stop and read the words.
Read MoreExiled Russian writer Nina Berberova (who fled to America when the Nazis invaded her adopted homeland of France) spent her entire career examining the experience of displacement. In this regular feature, Karen Vanuska revisits Berberova’s life and literary achievements and finds them startlingly relevant to our own fractured times.
Read MoreIn his lifetime, E.B. White oversaw nearly a dozen collections of his essays; Karen Vanuska appraises a posthumous ingathering edited by Rebecca M. Dale and lets us know whether it adds to White’s legacy or merely overlaps it
Read MoreSince its publication in 2000, The Last Samurai has been defined, but not explained, as a “cult classic.” In this regular feature, Garth Risk Hallberg looks with fresh eyes at Helen DeWitt’s brilliant and jolting novel.
Read MoreJoanna Scutts inaugurates this regular feature by revisiting the groundbreaking mysteries of Dorothy Sayers, who’s ability to wryly delight remains undimmed.
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