Volume 68, Number 20 (2021-12-16)

Labors of Love

Inspired new translations of Dante’s Purgatorio are faithful to its message of rehabilitation, reconciliation, and redemption.

Purgatorio

by Dante Alighieri, translated from the Italian and with an introduction and notes by Mary Jo Bang

Purgatorio

by Dante Alighieri, translated from the Italian and with commentary by D.M. Black, with a preface by Robert Pogue Harrison

After Dante: Poets in Purgatory: Translations by Contemporary Poets

edited by Nick Havely with Bernard O’Donoghue

Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno

by Rachel Owen, edited by David Bowe

Alma Guillermoprieto

Nicaragua’s Dreadful Duumvirate

Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s corrupt and paranoid dictatorship has destroyed the Sandinista movement’s proudest achievements.

Tongolele no sabía bailar [Tongolele Had No Rhythm]

by Sergio Ramírez

W.H. Auden

‘We get the Dialectic fairly well’

a poem

Nathaniel Rich

Exhilarating Antihumanism

Joy Williams’s Harrow, a screwball fantasia of environmental collapse, is mercilessly contemptuous of the pieties of our age.

Harrow

by Joy Williams

Marina Warner

Howl

The author of a new book on werewolves has hunted across the centuries for buried items of lore, ranging from ancient Greek texts to Victorian ghost stories.

The Werewolf in the Ancient World

by Daniel Ogden

Dan Chiasson

Frost at Midnight

A new, beautifully edited volume of Robert Frost’s letters finds him at the height of his artistic powers while suffering a series of losses almost unimaginable to the fortunate among us.

The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume 3: 1929–1936

edited by Mark Richardson, Donald Sheehy, Robert Bernard Hass, and Henry Atmore

Ben Lerner

Force of Gravity

Steffani Jemison’s videos activate questions of visibility and knowability, of the relation between exterior and interior, with an astonishing economy of means.

Steffani Jemison: Broken Fall

an exhibition at Greene Naftali, New York City, November 4–December 4, 2021

Irina Dumitrescu

Industrious Habits

In Matrix, Lauren Groff continues to ask the question that has haunted her work for years: What kind of utopias can we imagine when the apocalypse is already in sight?

Matrix

by Lauren Groff

Tim Flannery

Flies Like Us

Jonathan Balcombe’s Super Fly explores the immense world of flies.

Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects

by Jonathan Balcombe

Lorrie Moore

The Tender Trap

We ask marriage to provide personal growth plus affectionate companionship, sexual appreciation, and spiritual renewal. Can it sustain that expectation?

Couples Therapy

a documentary series directed by Josh Kriegman, Kim Roberts, Eli B. Despres, and Elyse Steinberg

Scenes from a Marriage

a miniseries written and directed by Hagai Levi and cowritten by Amy Herzog

Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
Andrew S. Curran

Inventing the Science of Race

In 1741, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results help us see how Enlightenment thinkers justified chattel slavery.

Lynn Emanuel

Finding Babel in the Drawer

“Speak the name of Isaac Babel,” wrote Irving Howe, “and one phrase comes insistently to mind: a writer of genius.”

James Quandt

The mercurial Austrian artist Maria Lassnig made extreme, unsparing paintings that attempt to translate corporeal sensations and ephemeral perceptions onto the canvas, but her films reveal a gentler side of her work.

Maria Lassnig: The Paris Years, 1960–68

an exhibition at the Petzel Gallery, New York City, November 4–December 17, 2021

Maria Lassnig: Film Works

edited by Eszter Kondor, Michael Loebenstein, Peter Pakesch, and Hans Werner Poschauko

Joan Silber

Continually Startling News

There is a good deal to like about the heartlessness that tinges Clare Sestanovich’s fiction.

Objects of Desire

by Clare Sestanovich

Coco Fusco

Whose Art Thrives in Cuba?

Art and dance were battlegrounds for the struggle to define the meaning of the revolution.

Cuban Memory Wars: Retrospective Politics in Revolution and Exile

by Michael J. Bustamante

Dancing with the Revolution: Power, Politics, and Privilege in Cuba

by Elizabeth B. Schwall

James Walton

‘Everything Is Fiction’

Keith Ridgway’s novels and stories try to render life as it is before the contrivances of fiction have gotten to it.

A Shock

by Keith Ridgway

David S. Reynolds

He Was No Moses

While he opposed slavery and southern secession early in his career, as president Andrew Johnson turned out to be an unsightly bigot.

The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

by Robert S. Levine

The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation

by Brenda Wineapple

Sigrid Nunez

But I Was Young and Foolish

Hermione Hoby’s Virtue is a recent coming-of-age story in which her protagonist, burdened with guilt and yet blessed with psychological acuity and a Nabokovian eye for beauty, reflects ruefully on his young life in New York.

Virtue

by Hermione Hoby

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Digging for Utopia

In The Dawn of Everything David Graeber and David Wengrow search for historical examples of nonhierarchical societies to justify their anarchist vision of human freedom. But must we find our future in the past?

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber and David Wengrow