Barnes & Noble Review officially publishes my review of Blake Bailey’s excellent new Cheever: A Life on Thursday, but I have the go-ahead to link now. John Updike, in his last-ever piece of book criticism, characterized the biography as a “heavy, dispiriting,” and dull read, b...

Amara Lakhous’ excellent Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio is this month’s Words Without Borders Book Club pick, and I’m leading the discussion. If you order the book now, you’ll be at less of a loss for something to do once the ballots have been coun...

My review of Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project appears in The Boston Globe today. Here’s an excerpt: The late, great writer and World War II veteran Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was captured by the Germans and confined to a prisoner-of-war camp in Dresden. When an American air raid destroyed t...