From the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, a special issue on modernist poet Hilda Doolittle. Omniscience is something that the novel always aspires for but never quite achieves. From NYRB, a review of Best European Fiction 2010, Why Translation Matters by Edith Grossman, The Novel: An Alternative History, Beginnings to 1600 by Steven Moore, and Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields. Jessica Loudis reviews Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life by Edna O’Brien. From the forthcoming The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, Benjamin Kunkel says goodbye to the graphosphere; and Marco Roth on the outskirts of progress. Two Canadian enthusiasts are launching an inventive mash-up of the Bard’s greatest hits. When literary trends survive: 5 trends that have made the leap to subgenre status. Are you there, God? How Christian YA novels are offering a surprisingly empowering guide to adolescence. More on Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature by Emma Donoghue. A review of The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief by James Wood. From LRB, a review of books on Leo Tolstoy. Yehuda Halevi is one of the great poets of the Western tradition, but it is difficult to convey his life and achievement to an English-reading audience. From the Spanish civil war onwards, writers were forced to negotiate a perilous intellectual divide — the result was the greatest era of political fiction we have known.
