Author Archive
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s Scary Fairy Tales
In Petrushevskaya’s stories, mothers often struggle to protect their children against the malice and indifference of a harsh reality. Only sometimes are they successful.
Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes
Guzel Yakhina’s 2015 novel is both a satisfying work of historical fiction as well as a moving portrait of a difficult period. Its most surprising element is also its most paradoxical. Perhaps in spite of Yakhina’s intentions, it posits a woman whose life is expanded and even enriched while
Tending the Shared Garden of Immunity
In trying to understand immunity as concept and metaphor, Eula Biss’s 2014 book reveals the profound ethical dilemma that has always inscribed itself into the vaccination debate, which, at root, is about the relationship between self and other, between individual bodies and the social body.