Books

César Aira writes practically off the cuff, creating narrative puzzles for the fun of solving them. Should his readers feel tricked?

As our population ages, the question becomes more dire: how do we preserve the rights of the elderly? Atul Gawande's Being Mortal contains some ideas.

The Giller Prize-winning author returns with a new novel, Quartet for the End of Time, which challenges not only her readers, but the limits of artistic expression.

An investigation into lost spaces, secret cities, and other inscrutable geographies.

The author of This Changes Everything on how the environmental movement went awry, and why it needs to rediscover its sense of radicalism—demanding deep change from the status quo.

Robert of Timothy Findley’s The Wars is a survivor, and he curses himself. What does it mean to be the sole survivor?

Can learning the Lindy Hop make you a better thinker, doer, internet user? Lessons from Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mind hint that it might

Ben Lerner's 10:04 is about a writer writing about being a writer writing. So what makes it so good?

Vollmann isn't post-modern so much as a 19th-century Romantic, roping himself to his desk. If you’re not in the mood it’s too rich; if you are, it’s a banquet.