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1: The Celebration of my Birth I am the eldest son of a deeply traditional family from Raqqa, a city that was once enchanted. And still is... A city that stood alone on the banks of the Euphrates River. Anyone born there could live an innocent life, just as I did. Born in 1991, I brought the prid| Grand
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.| Grand
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.| Grand
(a free translation of Sorley MacLean’s “A Chìall ‘s a Ghràidh”) If our language said that sense is equivalent to love it lied. When I saw your face I had no sense of love’s asymmetries. When I heard your voice it didn’t crack open my chest at first. But love breached, unnoticed, and ripped apart […]| Grand
A master of fiction whose work wrestles with moral complexity, cultural identity, and the absurdity of the human condition, Nathan Englander’s choice of ten favorite books offers a glimpse into the influences that shape his voice. From the surreal satire of Gogol’s The Nose to the poetic gravitas of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, consider these ten […]| Grand
Just before the world shut down in 2020, I took on an unusual assignment—curating a library for a luxury apartment building in downtown Manhattan. The space was vast, stretching on either side of an atrium tall enough to accommodate a small grove of graceful silver birch trees. The job seemed straightforward at first, but I’d […]| Grand
The novelists Edmund White, who died on 3 June, and John Irving, 82, might not seem an obvious match, but their decades-long friendship is rooted in a shared interest in challenging America’s puritanical attitudes. In one book after another, these literary lions have explored sexuality and identity in ways that challenge readers to examine their […]| Grand
“True compassion takes courage,” writes the prize-winning author Yiyun Li in this excerpt from her astonishing new memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow. Here, she navigates the profound pain of losing her two sons, Vincent and James, to suicide; the inadequacies of language; and the relentless task of continuing to live with unanswerable questions. Children […]| Grand
Translator’s Note: This is a new translation of Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani’s “A Note from Gaza.” Kanafani (1936-1972) wrote the story in 1956 when he was teaching in Kuwait. The last of three such notes—the others are from Ramla and Tira, both located within present-day Israel’s borders—it| Grand
