Readings

It was the Siberian site of the Russia’s gulags—a remote region for those in exile or seeking safety. But with Dostoevsky, Eisenstein and Solzhenitsyn among its residents, willing or not, Kazakhstan’s unique cultural history can’t be ignored.

In our second dispatch from IFOA, Isabel Greenberg bring a comic to life, Xiaolu Guo wraps us up in language, and Anne Carson talks about Krapp Hour.

Maintaining a casual fascination with serial killers is macabre and almost entirely unnecessary, but it may actually have psychological benefits for the obsessive. At the very least, you’ll never be totally surprised if someone tries to kill you.

A new column viewing current events through culture: This week, Ian McEwan's Atonement and Tim Hecker's music listen in on the U.S-Germany and Canada-Brazil snooping scandals.