by Ruth Hoberman | Nov 30, 2025 | Reviews
New York TrilogyBy Peter BalakianThe University of Chicago Press, 2025 Here’s a strange thing: as I read Peter Balakian’s New York Trilogy, I kept thinking of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.” Not because they resemble each other—although in both poems a pair of lovers...
by David Roochnik | Oct 12, 2025 | Reviews
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This By Omar El Akkad New York: Knopf, 2025. 187 pp. This, in the title of Omar El Akkad’s remarkable book, refers to the slaughter of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza; a slaughter perpetrated...
by Alice Stephens | Aug 11, 2025 | Reviews
Director: Hyun kyung KimReleased: April 26, 2023 (Visions du Réel Film Festival, premiere)YouTube Trailer In the preamble to the documentary film, Defectors, directed by Hyun kyung Kim, a montage made with a map and scissors illustrates how the history of modern Korea...
by Joanna Chen | Jul 20, 2025 | Reviews
Peter Beinart’s new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (Knopf, January 28, 2025), constructs a specific narrative for Jews wrestling with Israel’s actions in Gaza and its dire consequences. The title is perhaps misleading; a more...
by Fred Marchant | May 7, 2025 | Reviews
Communiqués by Maria Galina / Russian and English, bi-lingual edition Translated by Anna Halberstadt & Ainsley Morse.Cicada Press, New York. (2023-24) $22.00. Those Absences Now Closest by Dzvinia OrlowskyCarnegie Mellon Press, Pittsburgh. (2024) $20.00 Maria...
by David Roochnik | Dec 7, 2024 | Reviews
The Beinart Notebook is a Substack site with a weekly “show” (via Zoom) in which the journalist Peter Beinart discusses issues concerning Israel-Palestine with his guests. These presentations are a marvelous, even inspiring, model of rational conversation about...
by Elizabeth Ferry | Sep 30, 2024 | Reviews
In her paramedic training, Ieva Jusionyte was told, when dealing with gunshot victims, to “always look for the exit wound.” Exit wounds are larger and more irregular than entry wounds, and their location helps medical workers discover the pathway a bullet has taken...
by Dewaine Farria | Jul 23, 2024 | Reviews
The notion of “the good war”—a just, nationwide effort against an obvious and perilous aggressor—pulses through Matt Gallagher’s latest novel, Daybreak (Simon & Schuster, Feb 20, 2024). This notion has perhaps been freshly reinstated in American public discourse,...
by Bruce Fulton | Sep 14, 2023 | Reviews
Farewell ValleyBy Im Ch’ŏru, translated from the Korean by Jennifer M. Lee and Jonathan R. Bagley (MerwinAsia, 2016) Readers new to Korean literature who value historical memory as a gateway to truth, reconciliation, and healing will find Farewell Valley a...
by Peter Brown | May 25, 2023 | Reviews
Today is a Different WarBy Lyudmyla Khersonska, translations by Olga Livshin, Andrew Janco, Maya Chhabra, and Lev Fridman (Arrowsmith Press, 2023). In the Hour of War: Poetry from UkraineEdited by Carolyn Forché and Ilya Kaminsky, with individual translators cited...
