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Reviews

Fatima Bhutto Writes About an Abusive Relationship and a Bond with an Animal. Both at Once.

Fatima Bhutto's new memoir investigates an abusive human relationship and a sustaining connection with the nonhuman. What does that say about us? Quite a lot.

D Dani Carrasco · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

News

Tina Fey Will Adapt Finlay Donovan — Which Raises the Usual Questions About Books and Television

Tina Fey has announced she will adapt the Finlay Donovan mystery series for television. Whether the adaptation industry is good or bad for literary culture is a question with a more complicated answer than either camp usually admits.

J James Whitmore · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Authors

Patricio Pron Opens His Pandora's Box with a Novel You Don't Expect

Patricio Pron's new novel is unpredictable — and in these times, that is worth more than it might seem. A writer who empties himself onto the page and invites you to do the same.

V Valentina Ríos · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Reviews

Helen Garner's Collected Stories and the Uneasy Vessel of Short Fiction

A new review of Helen Garner's collected stories argues that the short story form is an uneasy vessel for her work. I am not sure that is a criticism. Unease, in Garner, is usually the point.

S Sigrid Nørgaard · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Genres

Novels Are Getting Simpler. So What?

A new study shows that sentence complexity in contemporary fiction has declined over the past century. The question isn't whether this is true. The question is what it means.

D Dani Carrasco · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Authors

Sofía Balbuena Wins the Ribera del Duero Prize and Talks About Women's Inner Torment

Spanish author Sofía Balbuena has won the Ribera del Duero Prize for short fiction. Her work explores the inner lives of women — not as a sociological exercise, but as the only territory she seems interested in mapping.

J James Whitmore · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

News

The 2026 Publishing Triangle Award Finalists and What They Say About Queer Writing Today

The Publishing Triangle Award announces its 2026 finalists. Every year this list reminds me why queer literature is not a separate genre — it is the centre of something.

V Valentina Ríos · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

News

The PEN/Hemingway Award Names Its 2026 Winner — and Why Debut Fiction Still Matters

The 2026 PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction has been announced. It is a prize that has always believed in the difficult proposition that a first novel can matter as much as any other.

S Sigrid Nørgaard · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Reviews

Is Prestige Fiction Dead? That Depends on Who You Ask

A recent essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books conducts what it calls a 'depressing literary autopsy' of prestige fiction's decline. But before the funeral, it's worth asking: prestige for whom?

D Dani Carrasco · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Authors

Mariner Is Bringing Philip Roth Back — Which Raises the Usual Questions

Mariner Books has announced a Philip Roth reissue programme. Nobody is surprised, everyone has an opinion, and the books remain exactly as good and as troubling as they always were.

J James Whitmore · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Reviews

Lauren J. Joseph's New Novel Turns the Trans Rock Muse Into Something Wilder

Lauren J. Joseph's <em>Lean Cat, Savage Cat</em> takes the trans rock muse archetype and returns it its voice, body, and desire — a novel that refuses every apology.

V Valentina Ríos · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read

Authors

Lyndal Roper Wins the 2026 Holberg Prize for 'Outstandingly Original' Scholarship

The 2026 Holberg Prize has gone to historian Lyndal Roper, whose work on early modern Germany and the Reformation has consistently refused the comfortable distance most historians maintain from their subjects.

S Sigrid Nørgaard · Mar 20, 2026 · 3 min read