Anna Leszkiewicz ‘The Small Girl’s Proust’ Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle tends to be read as a romance novel. But beneath its surface charm is a metaliterary inquiry into form, style, and merit. July 13, 2024
Moeko Fujii Songs of Convenience Again and again in Yasujiro Ozu’s films, women ask what it means to lighten other people’s burdens—and what they might lose in the process. December 31, 2023
Christopher Benfey Solo Sonata In December 1943 the composer Béla Bartók, in exile from fascist Hungary, arrived for a stay in Asheville, North Carolina. December 17, 2023
Francesca Wade The Woman Alchemist Remedios Varo, part of the Surrealist exodus to Mexico City during World War II, transmuted her experience of exile into fantasies of cosmic unity. October 6, 2023
J. Hoberman Jammin’ in the Panoram During World War II, proto–music videos called “soundies” blared pop patriotism from visual jukeboxes across American bars. September 2, 2023
Jill Lepore The Everyman Library When my father died I inherited his library: tiny books, held in one hand, all bound in cloth, and smelling of Briggs tobacco. August 27, 2023
Frederic Wehrey In the Cave of the Rebel One of the worst massacres perpetrated by Mussolini’s forces in Ethiopia has come to light only in the past two decades, bringing a belated reckoning with Italy’s colonial atrocities. June 21, 2023
Spencer Lee-Lenfield Mysterious Displays of Will Nadine Hwang—a queer Chinese lawyer who joined the army, circulated in Paris salons, and survived Ravensbrück—never wrote a memoir, but her life itself became a work of art. January 4, 2023
Lucy Scholes Made Alone and Imperatively The British painter Maeve Gilmore found her muse in family and the home—but that refuge was not an idyll. August 5, 2022
Tariq Ali The Churchill Cult, by Jingo Lionized in the age of Brexit and Boris Johnson as the epitome of bulldog spirit, Britain’s wartime leader was often reviled in his own time as a blundering reactionary—and rightly so. April 18, 2022