Shakespeare in Love, or in Context
If society creates art, as Stephen Greenblatt believes, then why was Shakespeare's achievement so singular?
Book Review
Cheap at $13,000
What to read this month
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Humankind
From corruptibility to immortality, the human condition as revealed in four very different books
Survivor
Victor Klemperer's meticulous diaries of daily life under East Germany's "soul-smashing" Communists reveal a man trying to convince himself not that the system was wrong but that it was right
The Minister's Tale
Marilynne Robinson's long-awaited second novel is an almost otherworldly book—and reveals Robinson as a somewhat otherworldly figure herself
The Prime of Ms. Muriel Spark
Her latest novel isn't her best work, but it illuminates the novels that are
Fatherland
Philip Roth has conjured up an alternative America—but fantasy is the wrong form for a writer uncannily able to find real life fantastic
The Honorable Schoolboy
P. G. Wodehouse was a very advanced case of arrested development. Lucky for us
No Way, Madame Bovary
A new but not improved translation
Mind the Gap
Turkey is everyone's idea of a "successful" modern Muslim state. A new novel will make you think twice