Books

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.

Steely Dan and the sleazebag seventies, through the ironic lens of Donald Fagen’s Eminent Hipsters.

Pro wrestlers wreck their bodies, ruin their careers, die far ahead of schedule, and David Shoemaker draws from a rich well of their stories in his new book, The Squared Circle. Here are some, however, who improbably, defiantly made it out alive.

Video game scripts have come a long way, but few still boast authors as acclaimed as Disch, whose 1986 adventure is less a game written like a novel than a novel written as a game.

Lawrence Hill, author of the bestselling Book of Negroes and the memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice, admits he's long been obsessed with blood, and the myriad questions and themes it gives rise to. With this year's Massey Lecture, Hill explores the subject that's shadowed so much of his life.

The poet/critic/professor’s collection of essays makes you want to love what he loves—Susan Sontag, Debbie Harry—though he’s less interested in discourse than he is in the act of loving itself.