A new issue of Words Without Borders is out. Brad Baumgartner (IUP): Recovering Resentment: A Reflection on Disgust, Empathy, and Milton's Satan. William S. Haney II (AUS): Consciousness and the Posthuman in Short Fiction; and an essay on the wisdom of Shakespeare’s fools. And the Beat goes on: A forged will sends Jack Kerouac scholars, fans, collectors, literary executors, and lawyers on the warpath. Sappho, the great poet of the personal: Hardly any of the Greek poet's work survives, but the fragments that remain are enough to make her immortal. From The Guardian, an article on Leo Tolstoy, the forgotten genius; there's more to Tolstoy than War and Peace; and do today's novelists think Tolstoy is the greatest writer of all time? From Harper's, Elif Batuman on the murder of Leo Tolstoy: A forensic investigation. From The New Yorker, Claudia Roth Pierpont on the contemporary Arabic novel. An interview with Michael Ondaatje about why he writes novels, and when fiction can succeed by operating like poetry. In the fiction of Sylvia Townsend Warner, historical change is accidental and almost imperceptible, but for all that no less decisive. An interview with Orhan Pamuk on "finding an authentic voice". Enid Blyton may not have regarded the children of the post-colonial world as her audience, but many of the authors among them still cite her work as an inspiration. An article on Martin Amis: The wunderkind comes of age. James Wallenstein on Geoff Dyer’s unlikely terms of engagement (and from Bookforum, Kera Bolonik interviews Geoff Dyer on Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi).
