Department
Long Reviews
Full-length essay-reviews of single books, working through what the book attempts and what it accomplishes.
The Gilead Cycle Finished: A Late Reading of Marilynne Robinson's Four Novels
A return to the four Gilead novels in the spring of 2026, with the question of what the cycle has become now that <em>Jack</em> has settled into its position as the volume that closes it.
Olga Tokarczuk's <em>The Empusium</em> in English: A Long Reading
Antonia Lloyd-Jones's translation of Tokarczuk's 2022 novel reaches English in 2026, and the question of what the book attempts in its conversation with Thomas Mann.
Deborah Eisenberg's Collected Stories: A Late Reckoning
Picador's 2026 omnibus collects all seven volumes of Deborah Eisenberg's short fiction in one binding, occasion for a sustained reading of one of the strangest careers in American letters.
Finishing Javier Marías: A Late Reading of the Tomás Nevinson Trilogy
A long reading of Marías's final trilogy, completed and translated after the author's death in 2022, and the question of what the late work tells us about the whole career.
Sebald, Twenty-Five Years On: The Four Books, Reread
A return to the four prose works of W. G. Sebald in the spring of 2026, twenty-five years after his death, and the question of what survives the imitation that has followed.
Roberto Calasso's Last Books: A Survey of the Late Work
The eleven-volume <em>Opera in Corso</em> in the editions Adelphi and Farrar, Straus and Giroux have produced since Calasso's death in 2021, read for the shape they make together.
Rebecca West's Yugoslavia, Eighty-Five Years On
A return to <em>Black Lamb and Grey Falcon</em> in the spring of 2026, and the question of how much of West's 1937 Yugoslavia survives a second reading.
The Long Sentence: Reading Knausgaard's Six Volumes in One Summer
A sustained reading of the complete <em>My Struggle</em> across June, July, and August of 2026, and the question of what the project actually accomplishes when read end to end.