How the system failed an obsession.
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Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Escape from Baghdad!: Saad Hossain’s New Satire of the Iraq War
In his debut, Saad Hossain brings a much-needed cynicism to our literature of the Iraq War. An absurdist protest novel in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 or Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Escape from Baghdad! relentlessly focuses the reader’s attention on the folly of war.
Posted inBooks, Fiction
Curtis Sittenfeld’s ‘Prep,’ 10 Years Later
Sittenfeld’s smart debut novel about social dynamics at an exclusive boarding school remains relevant—and not just as a “coming of age novel”—a decade after it was first published.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
‘I Would Prefer Not To’: The Origins of the White Collar Worker
Before the Civil War, the clerk was “a small but unusual phenomenon.” By the end of the 19th century, clerical workers were a social force to be reckoned with. This is the story of their rise.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Interview with a Torturer
Documentary filmmaker and Khmer Rouge survivor Rithy Panh spent hundreds of hours interviewing Duch, the commandant of the Cambodia “killing fields” and one of the most notorious torturers of the 20th century. This is his haunting memoir of those interviews.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
A Resourceful Woman
“Mary Mazur, 61, shrank into the blankets, muttering into the leaves, whispering to her only friend.” An Instagram essay by Jeff Sharlet.
Posted inBooks, Editor's Pick, Fiction
The House Made of Sugar
A Longreads Exclusive: The newly translated short story from Silvina Ocampo’s collection, Thus Were Their Faces.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
Autistic and Searching for a Home
Between jail and the hospital, Savannah Shannon’s life is in limbo.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Loving Books in a Dark Age
In the “dark ages” of Europe, people began reading silently to themselves, and a love of books and learning took hold, pioneered by Bede.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Love, Identity, and Genderqueer Family Making
An excerpt from Maggie Nelson’s ‘The Argonauts’.
