News
July, 2020
In Little America
A migrant looks for safe haven "In Little America." An excerpt from my forthcoming novel, at n + 1.
April, 2020
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"
February, 2020
Advice to writers
I was asked a few questions about the writing life by Advice To Writers
January, 2020
Philip Roth’s Plo Against Americat, After Trump
David Simon's thrilling alt-history HBO series "Plot Against America," seems especially prescient these days. But, as I write for Agni Magazine, Philip Roth's 2004 novel had a contemporary target: the Dems who abetted Bush's invasion of Iraq..
November, 2018
Trump Cleaners
My dad opens a dry cleaner in Trump Village, circa 1964. In the London Review of Books, a brief blog item.
October, 2018
Deborah Eisenberg Duck
I review Deborah Eisenberg's latest collection of short stories, "Your Duck is My Duck" in the Financial Times.
June, 2018
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.
May, 2018
Darwin’s Ghosts
A preposterous, misguided novel. My review of Darwin's Ghosts in the New York Times.
February, 2018
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.
October, 2017
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.