“When the most internationally visible fiction from a country of 1.4 billion people is written primarily by a handful of authors living in Brooklyn, London, and Rome, the version of that country that reaches the global reader is inevitably partial.”

www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle/bo...

“My freedom is stronger than my fear. You are defeated the moment you stop fighting.” The indefatigable, admirable Francesca Albanese.

www.theguardian.com/law/2026/apr...

Released today. Disappointingly, no Indian writers, although there’s Salman Rushdie and Tahmima Anam.

Can a Journalist Be a Celebrity Anymore?

"...the modeling, the cameos, the invitations to movie and television premieres..." Will Patrick Radden Keefe be lost to the celebrity ecosystem, "another former writer performing being a writer"?

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/s...

Sad to hear of the passing of Yorkshire artist Glen Baxter. He had a uniquely surreal sensibility and, as one writer observed, the seemingly nonsensical phrases and quips that reframe his images "bring to attention the small gems of absurdity nestled within".

Frankenstein, Jane Eyre and Snow White with a gender-based perspective: ‘The Madwoman in the Attic’ and the beginning of feminist literary criticism A Spanish publisher has released a new edition of Gilbert and Gubar’s renowned 1979 book, which analyzed the work of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, the Brontë sisters and Emily Dickinson from a new angle

Revisiting Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's 'The Madwoman in the Attic', "a book that forms the backbone of feminist literary criticism".

english.elpais.com/culture/2026...

“Reading becomes impossible once you start judging writers by their personal defects.” Dwight Garner in his NYT review of ‘The Confessions of Samuel Pepys’ by Guy de la Bédoyère.

From the Rooftops of Tehran | Anonymous We in Iran own our grief, mourning all by ourselves.

A voice from Tehran: “We have been in mourning not just for the past two months but for many years now, and we feel that in this grief we are all alone, a nation stuck between several evils.” ($)

www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

Wrote about Mirza Waheed's 'Maryam & Son'.

I haven't read much fantasy fiction, but finding this charming and compelling: an indomitable heroine in London during WW2 comes up against forces determined to rewrite history. With passages of almost hypnotic prose.

Is d’Artagnan lying beneath a church in Maastricht? DNA will determine if remains found are those of the famous musketeer The genetic remains from the teeth will be compared with those of a descendant of the count immortalized by Alexandre Dumas and who died in 1673 during the French siege of the Dutch city

"All for one and one for all!" Have the remains of D'Artagnan, the musketeer immortalised in Alexandre Dumas’s novel, been found?

english.elpais.com/internationa...

Nonfiction Publishing, Under Threat, Is More Important Than Ever Cuts in publishing and book reviewing imperil the future of narrative nonfiction, and our understanding of the world around us.

The decline of narrative non-fiction imperils our understanding of the world around us.

newrepublic.com/article/2076...

“It’s always a market overreaction to unrelated events when the stock price goes down. When it goes up, it’s due to the brilliance of management, and rewarded with stock options.”

- Max Barry, ‘Company’

On Aragam, known as Kashmir's "book village".

Anne Lamott and Her Husband Neal Allen Want to Be Your Writing Teachers And they’re sharing the kind of advice that’ll help you find your voice and stop making excuses for not writing. Listen to this article.0:00/969.3276421× Do you remember the last time you read a sen...

"You don’t wait for inspiration...You write because you’ve decided you want to write." Anne Lamott's 'Bird by Bird' has been a beloved writing instruction book for ages. Now, she and husband Neal Allen have written another on how to improve sentences.
www.mariashriversundaypaper.com/anne-lamott-...

So this is what it’s come to.

They Would Not Dream of Flowers: Translating Through the Tehran Blackout - Public Books As the entire country was plunged into a digital blackout, the only light remaining in my room was the cold, clinical glow of my disconnected laptop. There, in that forced isolation, I sat translating...

"While I struggled to find Persian words for Trías’s tales of quiet loss, the air outside was thick with the scent of gunpowder and the final breaths of a generation." Miaad Banki on translating a story about death during a blackout in Tehran.

www.publicbooks.org/they-would-n...

“Literary translation is one of humanity’s most crucial tasks — one that should never be left to the machines.” Passionately argued piece on what we lose when we use AI to translate books.

www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2...

(Via Dave Tarnowski/Insta)

“In reality, every reader is, while reading, the reader of his own self.”

- Proust

If Banksy wants to remain anonymous, let him be.

A Bitter Education | Pankaj Mishra Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in The Discovery of India that “among the many people and races who have come in contact with Indians and influenced India’s life

Pankaj Mishra on India’s cultural and historical links with Iran, and what is lost in falling under the spell of gharbzadegi: “Westoxification”. ($)

www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

Fascinated by this description of how to plan a city, by M.A. Laugier in 1765.

“Come on Wall Street, don't be slow
I'm manning us a war to go, go
Plenty good money to be made
Supplying the army with the tools of the trade…”

Apt, though tragic, time to start reading this polyphonic International Booker Prize longlisted novel that seamlessly merges the personal with the political.

Oh no, things have really gone too far.

"American and Israeli thuggery": hard-hitting editorial in the Hindu.

Just when you thought the state of the world couldn’t get worse, U2 has gone and released a new set of protest songs.

brb, need to look up the meaning of the word “preemptive”.