Literary Radar

Articles, book reviews, literary critiques and journalistic reports around books on local and international media.

A Diary’s Unwanted Insights | THE NEW YORKER | 31/01/2023

In “Forbidden Notebook,” Alba de Céspedes upends the familiar story of self-liberation through writing.

Small-Town Affairs | THE NEW YORK TIMES | 26/01/2023

These romance novels brim with coziness and cupcake bakeries.

The Victorian Reformers Who Defended Same-Sex Desire | THE NEW YORKER | 16/01/2023 |

Confronting severe legal and social sanction, they sought to change the culture. A scholar and a novelist return us to a hinge of history.

The Transgressive Power of Alba de Céspedes | THE NEW YORK TIMES | 13/01/2023

A best-selling novelist and political activist in her native Italy, she was admired for her sensitive depictions of women and their predicaments. Recently rediscovered, her work has lost none of its subversive force

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What Lies Do to a Life | THE NEW YORKER | 05/01/2023

“A History of Lying,” the novelist Juan Jacinto Muñoz-Rengel argues that lies are inescapable. But being in the periphery of a real man who couldn’t stop lying casts light on the ways that’s not quite true.

Seventy-five Years After Indian Partition, Who Owns the Narrative? | THE NEW YORKER | 26/12/2022

Literature once filled in archival gaps by saying the unsayable.