Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for ‘Afterlives,’ which was not published in the United States until 2022.
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Evaluating our militant empire
In ‘War Made Invisible,’ Norman Solomon examines the variety of ways we are so often uninformed or misinformed by our mass media’s coverage (and non-coverage) of wars and their legacy of destruction.
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Review: Walter Brueggemann on what the Bible really says about our political culture
In ‘Ancient Echoes,’ the highly respected Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann provides a provocative set of essays that provides a useful treasury of biblical texts potentially relevant to contemporary political discussion.
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Review: Treating the spiritual life like an adventure
In ‘Seeing With the Heart,’ Kevin O’Brien, S.J., provides a reflective pause to holistically look at our lives, with all of their twists and turns of grace and challenge, and consider how we are living in relationship to ourselves, others and the divine.
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Review: At court and in the convent
Bronwen McShea’s recent book La Duchesse chronicles the life of Marie de Vignerot, the niece, protégé and heiress of Cardinal Richelieu.
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Review: The art of Jesuit mapmaking
Mirela Altic’s ‘Encounters in the New World’ tells the story of Jesuit cartography during the Age of Exploration—when Jesuit missionaries played a crucial role as conduits among cultures, becoming bridges that allowed knowledge to flow between Europeans and Indigenous Americans.
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Review: Sometimes bigger is better.
In his new book, ‘Small Isn’t Beautiful: The Case Against Localism,’ Trevor Latimer argues that localist policies often do not achieve what their proponents intend.
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Review: Pairing spirituality and theology, Ignatian style
In ‘Renewing Theology,’ J. Matthew Ashley argues that when brought into dynamic relation with spirituality (and vice versa), the work of theology is deeply relevant to our lives and is vital at every level of following Christ. It becomes part and parcel of a “way of life”—the life of faith.
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Review: St. Katharine Drexel’s complicated record on race
In ‘Katherine Drexel and the Sisters Who Shared Her Vision,’ the historian Margaret McGuinness has performed another valuable service to American Catholic history.
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In ‘Doppelganger,’ Naomi Klein investigates her twin and uncovers a shadow world
Naomi Klein’s new book serves as a kind of sociopolitical post-mortem of the Covid era, in which our social divisions and paranoias only grew more strident. It is also tragically timely.