The Best Books of 2023
It won’t surprise PopMatters readers that many of our best books of 2023 are excavations of our increasingly clamorous culture. It wasn’t a year for escapism.
margaret atwood
Margaret Atwood’s ‘Old Babes in the Wood’ Fears Nothing
Margaret Atwood’s Old Babes in the Wood brims with biting humor, precise detail, and incisive observations about life and aging.
Eight Great Speculative Fiction Books by Women
Need a break from so-called reality? These eight speculative fiction authors represent the best of the best in the sci-fi genre.
Short Stories: Beginnings and Endings
These five short stories are about new beginnings and unsettling endings that aren’t really endings.
Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum: On the Literature of Witness in Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Testaments’
Margaret Atwood's The Testaments provides a hard-earned and much-needed "happy" ending to the dystopian parallel universe that is The Handmaid's Tale, albeit at great cost and courage to one vital witness.
Open Court’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Philosophy Emphasizes Caution and Awareness
As far as The Handmaid's Tale and Philosophy is concerned, Trump et al are the exact bastards you're not supposed to let grind you down.
Puritans with Machine Guns in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
The first season of this icily horrific series is a crash course in the possibilities of a uniquely American 'It Could Happen Here' patriarchal Christian fascism.
The Galloway Case: Sexual Harassment, Due Process, and Literary Exceptionalism
Steven Galloway's sexual harassment case, and the literary establishment's response to it, reveals a lot about how much work still needs to be done in combating misogyny.