The Canadian author Miriam Toews (pronounced “Taves”) is a doyenne of the tragicomic. As Alexandra Schwartz noted in a New Yorker profile (March 18, 2019), Toews…
Since challenging Haruki Murakami over his depiction of female characters during a live interview in 2017, Mieko Kawakami has emerged as a literary feminist icon. “Women are no longer content to…
In this delightful sequel to her semi-autobiographical novel The Idiot (2017), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Elif Batuman returns to Harvard to follow her protagonist Selin…
Louise Kennedy’s debut novel plunges us into Northern Ireland in 1975 — one of the bloodiest years of the Troubles, despite a ceasefire.
Cushla Lavery is a 24-year-old Catholic primary school teacher…
There’s an Oulipian game I like to play when reviewing the work of young female Irish writers: can I avoid any reference to Sally Rooney? To my mind, it’s reductive to…
Adrian Duncan’s new novel is his fourth book in four years (I’ll have whatever he’s having). His 2019 debut, Love Notes from a German Building Site, which won the inaugural John McGahern Book…