‘People of the City’ Is an Unrelenting Critique of Colonial Ideology and Praxis
Cyprian Ekwensi's People of the City is a vivid tale of class struggle and identity reclamation in the shadows of colonialism's reign.
nyrb classics
Providing Witness: Vasily Grossman’s ‘Stalingrad’
In Vasily Grossman, the lost and nameless victims of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union – soldier and civilian, ordinary men and women – found their literary chronicler.
Robert Aickman’s ‘Compulsory Games’ and the Art of the Miserably Fascinating Short Story
Aickman's ability to imbue in the mundane a hint of the supernatural pushes these stories from the utterly average into absorbing, fascinating territory.
‘Melville: A Novel’ and Its ‘Foreign Companion’
Something of a paean to Herman Melville and Moby Dick, just reading Jean Giono's writing for its own sake is both different from what you might expect -- and delightful.