Zadie Smith

An ‘Invaluable’ Source

What Do We Want History to Do to Us?

For Kara Walker dread is an engine: it prompts us to remember and rightly fear the ruins we shouldn’t want to return to, and don’t wish to re-create—if we’re wise.

The Muse at Her Easel

Celia Paul’s ‘Self-Portrait’

In Defense of Fiction

We have found fiction wanting in myriad ways but rarely paused to wonder, or recall, what we once wanted from it.

Under NYC's Banner

Yes, we “carry on,” after disaster and attack, but that’s not all we do. We also function pretty well day-to-day, with our multiple gods, and none, with our graven images, and our Babel of languages.

On Robert Silvers

Nineteen writers remember The New York Review’s editor.

On Optimism and Despair

If novelists know anything it’s that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities.

Egypt: Laughter in the Dark

The prose of Egyptian novelist Ahmed Naji, who is currently in jail for “infringing public decency,” explicitly confronts what happens when one’s fundamentally unserious, oversexed youth dovetails with an authoritarian, utterly self-serious regime that is in the process of tearing itself apart.

Fences: A Brexit Diary

A referendum is a very ineffective hammer for a thousand crooked nails

Windows on the Will

Human needs, Schopenhauer thought, are not in their essence complex.

Find Your Beach

The pursuit of happiness in Manhattan

On ‘Crash’

Elegy for a Country’s Seasons

It’s hard to keep apocalypse consistently in mind, especially if you want to get out of bed in the morning.

Man vs. Corpse

How can I insist upon the reality of death, for others, and for myself?

Love in the Gardens

Joy

The thing no one ever tells you about joy is that it has very little real pleasure in it.

Keep Willesden Green

North West London Blues

The North West London Blues

I don’t think the argument in favor of libraries is especially ideological or ethical. I would even agree with those who say it’s not especially logical. I think for most people it’s emotional. Not logos or ethos but pathos. This is not a denigration: emotion also has a place in public policy. We’re humans, not robots.

Killing Orson Welles at Midnight