Robert Alter
Nothing but Literature
Kafka’s unabridged diaries are, for the first time, available in English. What do they teach us about a man who was a lacuna of himself?
The Wry Comedy of A. B. Yehoshua
Remembering the ebullient spirit and radical fiction of A. B. Yehoshua.
Blocked Desire
The Tunnel, A. B. Yehoshua’s most recent novel, written as he moved into his eighties, does not exhibit any traits of what some literary critics have called “the style of old age,” but its unusual subject, incipient dementia, is patently a concern of old age.
Inerrant or Oblique?
John Barton has written a wonderful book about the Bible for believers and nonbelievers alike.
Man of Letters
Adam Kirsch’s judicious selection of Lionel Trilling’s letters throws instructive light on both Trilling’s life and American intellectual culture from the 1920s to the 1970s.
Unsettling Days
Assaf Gavron’s The Hilltop is a refreshing reminder that traditional realism is still an effective vehicle of insight into contemporary society and politics.
Give Ear O Ye Heavens
Benjamin Harshav’s lifelong engagement in the forms of poetry has been a unique—and uniquely valuable—project.
Yehuda Amichai: At Play in the Fields of Verse
Yehuda Amichai was an exuberant person with a lively, impish sense of humor. He was, at the same time, a melancholy man. Both traits are present in his poetry.
Proverbs 8:22-31
Many have marveled at the wisdom of the biblical books attributed to King Solomon. Here, in a new translation by Robert Alter, is Proverbs' account of the birth of Wisdom herself, from The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary, now out with Norton.
All the Good Things of Spain
The greatest Hebrew poet gets the English bio he deserves.