Alex Ross, a thirty-year-old psychologist, enjoys the benefits of a close-knit family: her mother and aunt are twins married to two close friends, and Alex and her cousins, Rolf and Stephen, grew up as if they were siblings. When Rolf is killed in a car accident, Alex's entire family spins into grief and chaos. Nathaniel, a mysterious art ......
In 2015, a massive avalanche descended on the small Arctic Norwegian city of Longyearbyen, Svalbard, leveling eleven houses and killing a two-year-old girl and a young father. It was a tragic natural disaster but one that was becoming increasingly and alarmingly common for citizens of Svalbard, like journalist Line Nagell YlvisAker. In her ......
American Fantastic challenges readers to recognize an organizing myth in modern American culture's perception of its imperialist past: 'the myth of redemptive violence.' Derek J. Thiess persuasively argues that this myth serves to obscure the deep thread of Christian supremacy that underwrites America's colonial and imperial impulse, from the ......
How do we make sense of our suffering? World of Dew grapples with this question by embracing impermanence, the death of a loved one, the transmutation of an old belief, the adoption of a new culture. Lindsay Stuart Hill navigates the space "where 'lost' still differs from 'gone'" and the dream of reversal or undoing remains: "Turn your back to a ......
Following Stalin's death in 1953 and Khruschev's acknowledgment of Stalin's crimes in 1956, "sincerity" emerged as a cultural imperative in the Soviet Union. Unlike the fare of the Stalin era, the cinema of this period turned inward, insisting on ordinary characters and creating a sense of spontaneity through particular staging methods and ......
Founded in 1932, the Perkonkrusts ("Thunder Cross") was the largest and most prominent right-wing political party in Latvia in the early twentieth century. Its motto-"Latvia for Latvians!"-echoed the ultranationalist rhetoric of similar movements throughout Europe at the time. Unlike the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in Italy, however, the ......
Time is slippery. At Some Point openly acknowledges this while exploring the intersections between past and present, childhood and adulthood, midlife and mortality. Joyously and solemnly tugging on the threads that connect us-to life, to the planet, to each other-David O'Connell finds meaning in the small things: vacation photos, middle school ......
An unflinching tale of selfishness and sacrifice, guilt and resentment, hope and despair, Bruce Snider's fourth collection tells the story of two brothers torn apart by opioid addiction. "He needed help," writes Snider. "I imagined the chemicals in his brain like the chemicals in mine. // I imagined our DNA, mirrors facing one another-an infinite ......
Readers first meet Simone Lerrante, a Belgian war orphan, as a child refugee in Sussex, England, her memory damaged by trauma. The novel offers a kaleidoscopic vision of Simone's fractured life and piecemeal understanding of self across multiple points of view. Following her from Cambridge to New York City and across the United States - through a ......
