James Wood
James Wood has been a staff writer and book critic at The New Yorker since 2007. In 2009, he won the National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. He was the chief literary critic at the Guardian, in London, from 1992 to 1995, and a senior editor at The New Republic from 1995 to 2007. His critical essays are collected in “The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief”; “The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel,” which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and “The Fun Stuff: And Other Essays.” Wood is also the author of the novel “The Book Against God”; a study of technique in the novel, “How Fiction Works”; and a collection of essays, “Serious Noticing: Selected Essays, 1997-2019.” His latest novel, “Upstate,” was published in 2018. He is a professor of the practice of literary criticism at Harvard University.
The Graceful Rebellions of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The poet Patrick Mackie hears Mozart’s music as impropriety, as ambition—and even as revenge.
Martin Amis’s Comic Music
The great British novelist, who has died at seventy-three, had a true literary vitality that was high-spirited and farcical.
Daughters Outgrow Their Parents in Two Unsparing Novels
The fiction of Gwendoline Riley ruthlessly depicts the fragile tedium of broken people who are desperate to be normal.
Cormac McCarthy Peers Into the Abyss
The eighty-nine-year-old novelist has long dealt with apocalyptic themes. But a pair of novels about ill-starred mathematicians takes him down a different road.
Outbreaks and Uprisings in Orhan Pamuk’s “Nights of Plague”
When an epidemic comes to an enchanting Mediterranean island, the political consequences are as momentous as the medical ones.
A Cult Classic of Extreme Isolation
In Marlen Haushofer’s novel “The Wall,” a woman finds herself alone and trapped in the Alps by an invisible barrier. But her new life has its upsides.
The Many Confrontations of Jean Rhys
In her life and in her writing, the author of post-colonial works such as “Wide Sargasso Sea” met adversity—inflicted and self-inflicted—with an unflinching eye.
How Ireland Took On the Church and Freed Its Soul
A nation learned to dodge God’s law in everything from biscuits to birth control, until religious doublethink became an agent of its own undoing.
Led Zeppelin Gets Into Your Soul
The musicians were diabolically bad as people, and satanically good as performers.
Anthony Doerr’s Optimism Engine
In “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” the world may be falling apart but everything and everyone must come together.
Sunjeev Sahota’s Novels of Arrival and Departure
In “China Room,” the journeys of immigrants divide stories and selves.
Francisco Goldman, Archivist and Alchemist of the Self
In “Monkey Boy,” an autofictional avatar plunges into the past while struggling to stay afloat in the present.
A Family at Odds Reveals a Nation in the Throes
Damon Galgut’s novel “The Promise” explores the betrayals of South Africa through a perfectly pitched domestic drama.
Kazuo Ishiguro Uses Artificial Intelligence to Reveal the Limits of Our Own
In his latest novel, the gaze of an inhuman narrator gives us a new perspective on human life, a vision that is at once deeply ordinary and profoundly strange.
Does Knowing God Just Take Practice?
For both the faithful and the doubtful, the source of religious experience can seem mysterious. One anthropologist explores belief in more mundane terms—as a form of expertise.
Yaa Gyasi Explores the Science of the Soul
In her second novel, Gyasi examines the forces of repression through a mother and daughter’s shared loss.
Catherine Lacey and the Art of Enigma
A puzzling stranger puts a religious community to the test in Lacey’s new novel, “Pew.”
A Début Novel’s Immersive Urgency
In Megha Majumdar’s “A Burning,” a terrorist event transforms three lives—and the elements of a thriller are transmuted into prismatic portraiture.
The Scholar Starting Brawls with the Enlightenment
Has the cult of rationality blinded us to the power of transcendence?
When Historical Fiction Goes Magical
The novelist Daniel Kehlmann evokes an era of doctrinal fervor—and brings to life a mythical trickster.
The Graceful Rebellions of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The poet Patrick Mackie hears Mozart’s music as impropriety, as ambition—and even as revenge.
Martin Amis’s Comic Music
The great British novelist, who has died at seventy-three, had a true literary vitality that was high-spirited and farcical.
Daughters Outgrow Their Parents in Two Unsparing Novels
The fiction of Gwendoline Riley ruthlessly depicts the fragile tedium of broken people who are desperate to be normal.
Cormac McCarthy Peers Into the Abyss
The eighty-nine-year-old novelist has long dealt with apocalyptic themes. But a pair of novels about ill-starred mathematicians takes him down a different road.
Outbreaks and Uprisings in Orhan Pamuk’s “Nights of Plague”
When an epidemic comes to an enchanting Mediterranean island, the political consequences are as momentous as the medical ones.
A Cult Classic of Extreme Isolation
In Marlen Haushofer’s novel “The Wall,” a woman finds herself alone and trapped in the Alps by an invisible barrier. But her new life has its upsides.
The Many Confrontations of Jean Rhys
In her life and in her writing, the author of post-colonial works such as “Wide Sargasso Sea” met adversity—inflicted and self-inflicted—with an unflinching eye.
How Ireland Took On the Church and Freed Its Soul
A nation learned to dodge God’s law in everything from biscuits to birth control, until religious doublethink became an agent of its own undoing.
Led Zeppelin Gets Into Your Soul
The musicians were diabolically bad as people, and satanically good as performers.
Anthony Doerr’s Optimism Engine
In “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” the world may be falling apart but everything and everyone must come together.
Sunjeev Sahota’s Novels of Arrival and Departure
In “China Room,” the journeys of immigrants divide stories and selves.
Francisco Goldman, Archivist and Alchemist of the Self
In “Monkey Boy,” an autofictional avatar plunges into the past while struggling to stay afloat in the present.
A Family at Odds Reveals a Nation in the Throes
Damon Galgut’s novel “The Promise” explores the betrayals of South Africa through a perfectly pitched domestic drama.
Kazuo Ishiguro Uses Artificial Intelligence to Reveal the Limits of Our Own
In his latest novel, the gaze of an inhuman narrator gives us a new perspective on human life, a vision that is at once deeply ordinary and profoundly strange.
Does Knowing God Just Take Practice?
For both the faithful and the doubtful, the source of religious experience can seem mysterious. One anthropologist explores belief in more mundane terms—as a form of expertise.
Yaa Gyasi Explores the Science of the Soul
In her second novel, Gyasi examines the forces of repression through a mother and daughter’s shared loss.
Catherine Lacey and the Art of Enigma
A puzzling stranger puts a religious community to the test in Lacey’s new novel, “Pew.”
A Début Novel’s Immersive Urgency
In Megha Majumdar’s “A Burning,” a terrorist event transforms three lives—and the elements of a thriller are transmuted into prismatic portraiture.
The Scholar Starting Brawls with the Enlightenment
Has the cult of rationality blinded us to the power of transcendence?
When Historical Fiction Goes Magical
The novelist Daniel Kehlmann evokes an era of doctrinal fervor—and brings to life a mythical trickster.