News
No Signal Area Perisic
A new Croatian novel, set in the postwar Balkans, draws sly parallels between failed countries and failed loves. Not unresonant reading in our own failing country. My NY Times review of "No-Signal Area"
Advice to writers
I was asked a few questions about the writing life by Advice To Writers
Philip Roth’s Plo Against Americat, After Trump
Philip Roth's "Plot Against America," adapted by David Simon, is coming to HBO. The alt-history seems especially prescient these days. But, as I write for Agni Magazine, the 2004 novel had a contemporary target: the Dems who abetted Bush's invasion of Iraq..
Trump Cleaners
My dad opens a dry cleaner in Trump Village, circa 1964. In the London Review of Books, a brief blog item.
Deborah Eisenberg Duck
I review Deborah Eisenberg's latest collection of short stories, "Your Duck is My Duck" in the Financial Times.
Who Will Speak for America
In Who Will Speak for America?, 44 writers attempt to make sense of and respond to our national crisis. My piece, "Three Days," addresses the wild acceleration of the news cycle, which has sown confusion, indifference and forgetfulness about the events of the immediate past. The book is published by Temple University Press, for the benefit of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Darwin’s Ghosts
A preposterous, misguided novel. My review of Darwin's Ghosts in the New York Times.
Savages
In a new thriller from France, conspirators attempt to kill the "French Obama," the country's first Muslim candidate. I review Savages in the Financial Times.
Mihail Sebastian
The rhetoric is "idiotic," but "the point is to shake the country up a bit." I review For Two Thousand Years in the New York Times.
Thoreau review
A splendid new biography of Henry David Thoreau. My review for the Financial Times.