Edward Carver reviews Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor’s “Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea ..read more

A double-header episode about two new novels that each feature high stakes feats of translation ..read more

Dashiel Carrera reviews Nicolette Polek’s “Bitter Water Opera ..read more

Robert P. Crease reviews Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson’s “The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience.” (2023), paper beads on barkcloth, 57 7/8 x 66 1/8 inches; (2023), paper beads on barkcloth, 75 x 64 1/2 inches. Images courtesy of Karma and Sanaa Gateja ..read more

THIS BOOK’S AMBITION is breathtaking. The three authors of The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience (2024) argue that it is urgent to change the science-shaped worldview that permeates our political, economic, and social systems. “[O]ur collective future and human project of civilization are at stake,” they warn in the book’s opening sentence. Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser are eminent physicist-astronomers, and Evan Thompson is a prominent philosopher and cognitive scientist. They take us through several fields, from relativity and quantum mechanics to cognitive and planetar ..read more

“WHAT IF TO TRANSLATE was to look for lost words,” asks Mireille Gansel in a line from her genre-defying Soul House (2023), a meditation on poetry and translation as forms of hospitality, translated from the French by Joan Seliger Sidney. I misread this line at first, mistaking “words” for “worlds,” then wondered whether it couldn’t work both ways. Might the search for words really be a search for worlds, for a world or a house—like the spiritual dwelling invoked by the title—“filled with voices which enchant you—and with words which speak a soul language”? Gansel’s book, a bilingual collectio ..read more

Subscribe on Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud Do you love listening to the LARB Radio Hour? Support the production of this weekly podcast on books, art, and culture. Donate today. A double-header episode about two new novels that each feature high stakes feats of translation. First, the translator and writer Jenny Croft speaks with Medaya Ocher about her debut novel, The Extinction of Irena Rey. It follows eight translators who have just arrived at the house of a famous, beloved writer, the titular Irena Rey. Suddenly, Irena disappears, and the translators are left to figure out what has h ..read more

WHEN I FIRST moved to Los Angeles, I was enraptured—not by the sun, nor by the looming specter of celebrity, but by the novelty and variety of the landscape. Back in my suburban Maryland hometown, the terrain had been flat and monotonous; lawns, soccer fields, and stretches of forest were all painted the same sleepy shade of green. In Los Angeles, craggy golden mountains rise above hotels, marquees, and parking garages; freeways run parallel to the vast, blue Pacific. Even the city’s infamous traffic jams offer opportunities to reflect on (and in) nature’s radiance. Soon after my arrival, I se ..read more

IN OUT OF PLACE: A Memoir (1999), Edward Said recalls that after graduating from Princeton in June 1957, he was torn by “differing impulses”: he could pursue a fellowship from Harvard for graduate study or return to Cairo to work at his father’s stationery company. Eventually, Said deferred Harvard for a year and returned to “sample the Cairo life.” Said claimed that he had no interest in his father’s business, and in the memoir, he recalls how he spent his afternoons in his father’s office: “I would either read—I remember I spent a week reading all through Auden, another leafing through the P ..read more

WRITING A BOOK on Taiwan meant for a general audience is a deceptively difficult task. According to the logic—or illogic—of contemporary geopolitics, Taiwan is a subject of both great and troubling interest. It seems to contain within it the potential for war or peace, making it taboo to discuss squarely, for fear that doing so might trigger global conflict. To write a book that aims to introduce Taiwan to as broad an audience as possible is thus to declare that Taiwan should not be off-limits. It can be analyzed using many of the same empirical tools that are brought to bear on other places i ..read more