Sophie Pinkham

Immune to Despair

In his novels, rock songs, and social activism, Serhiy Zhadan has long been a builder of bridges in Ukraine, an essential figure in a bitterly divided landscape.

Trade Exceptions

In Brittney Griner, the Putin administration may have found the perfect hostage to leverage into a high-profile prisoner swap.

A Hotter Russia

The cliché, avidly promoted by Moscow, is that Russia will be a relative winner in climate change, but a new book argues that the country will find itself in trouble.

Perversions of Historical Memory

“Writing about Russia feels different after this invasion.”

The Freedom of Historical Fiction

The Formalist literary critic Yuri Tynianov wrote historical novels as “experiments in scholarly fantasy.”

Designs for Living

Svetlana Kana Radević’s architecture adapted modernism to the peculiarities of history and politics in Communist Yugoslavia.

Whose Liberation?

No More Mother-Saviors

Recent collections of poetry by Russian women offer a glimpse of how perceptions of feminism are changing in post-communist Slavic countries.

‘Something Resembling Normal Life’

Paek Nam-nyong’s ‘Friend’ tells ordinary stories of love and divorce in 1980s North Korea.

Living by Lies

Joshua Yaffa’s ‘Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia’

My Quarantine: Savoring the Ramen Western

Tampopo’s ode to the oral ends with a shot of a woman breastfeeding on a sunny park bench. As the credits roll, the camera closes in on the blissful face of the firmly latched infant. Suck, slurp, lick, share: these are joys of living.

Realists of the Soviet Fantasy

Artists like Deineka and Samokhvalov managed to produce valuable work while navigating the shoals of Soviet doctrine.

Blood on the Ice

Bathsheba Demuth’s ‘Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait’

Ukraine’s New Leading Man

Starring in a TV show is easier than running a country.

The Chernobyl Syndrome

Three new books on the disaster and our radioactive world