Biography & Memoir

Return Flights

Two hundred thousand South Korean children have been adopted since the Korean War. Adoptee memoirs, once full of confession and confusion, are now marked by confidence and rage.

January 13, 2022 issue

Caroline Fraser

From Hell and Back

A harrowing, suppressed memoir by Gertrude Beasley and a revisionist western by Robin McLean add up to a savage indictment of regional misogyny.

January 13, 2022 issue

Nathan Whitlock

Misbehaving Like Adults

The people in Helen Garner’s books are defined by their interactions with others; life is communal, even for those who wish it were not so.

January 13, 2022 issue

Gary Saul Morson

Falling in Love with Terror

Boris Savinkov practiced the two most prestigious Russian occupations in the early twentieth century: terrorism and novel writing.

January 13, 2022 issue

Jacqueline Rose

An Endless Seeing

Simone Weil’s political and moral vision always looked beyond her own earthly sphere of existence, which she held in more or less steady contempt.

January 13, 2022 issue

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.

December 16, 2021 issue

Irving Howe

Finding Babel in the Drawer

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

December 16, 2021 issue

David Motadel

Nazis on the Run

Many perpetrators of the Holocaust escaped justice. Should Germany prosecute as accessories to murder the elderly few who remain alive?

December 2, 2021 issue

The Latest

Melissa Chadburn

A True Crime

After murder came with shocking suddenness to my small town, I started questioning the storytelling ethics of a genre in which I myself had a stake.

January 22, 2022

Anne Diebel

The Dungeon Master

Peter Thiel is full of contradictions—a libertarian who founded a company that aids government surveillance, a critic of tech who supports Facebook’s mission for world domination, and a defender of free speech who helped to kill a media outlet.

February 10, 2022 issue

Darryl Pinckney

Our Lady of Deadpan

Joan Didion’s genius was at exploring the paradoxes and contradictions in the stories we tell ourselves.

February 10, 2022 issue

Colm Tóibín

Picasso’s Obsessions

The last volume of John Richardson’s biography documents the rivalry between Dora Maar and Marie-Thérèse Walter for the painter’s attention and his intense engagement with depicting them.

February 10, 2022 issue

Michael Hofmann

In the Pencil Zone

Susan Bernofsky’s biography of Robert Walser approaches her subject with an openness to other, previously rejected possibilities.

February 10, 2022 issue

Melissa Febos

Jeanette Winterson, My Therapist, and Me

To a teenage girl just figuring out she was queer, the unintended gift of the British writer’s novel Written on the Body came with the force of a revelation.

January 15, 2022

Adam Shatz

Notes on a Mugging

My attackers came out of nowhere on a familiar street and didn’t even take my wallet. But they robbed me of something: a New Yorker’s self-assurance.

January 7, 2022

Sayed Kashua

What Can I Give My Cashier Friend at Christmas?

At this pandemic holiday season, the checkout lady at Schnucks has become my most important relationship outside family. But behind our masks, I have no idea how to celebrate that.

December 23, 2021

Joyce Johnson

Pearl Harbor and After

“The War,” as I came to think of it, seemed a distant rumble during my Brooklyn childhood. Only later would I feel the dark ways it reverberated through our lives.

December 5, 2021

Eduardo Halfon

The Last Tiger

Kullu seemed haunted by the tale he told me of his grandfather’s encounter with a mighty predator. But he had another history to share, one to haunt me.

November 30, 2021