Ayad Akhtar on Truth and Fiction

Virginia Evans’s debut novel, “The Correspondent,” was published last April and became one of the publishing industry’s heartwarming champions of 2025: a slow-burn success story that gathered momentum...

9 Jan 40min

Ian McEwan’s latest novel, “What We Can Know,” is many things at once: It’s a science fiction imagining of a future world devastated by climate catastrophe; it’s a literary mystery about a scholar’s s...

27 Des 202551min

From political tell-alls to the continued triumph of romantasy novels, it’s been an eventful year in the publishing world. On this week’s episode, host MJ Franklin talks with his Book Review colleague...

19 Des 202547min

Here we are in mid-December, which means that along with all of the other year-end lists we produce and avidly consume at this time each year, The New York Times Book Review's staff critics are also l...

12 Des 202536min

All year long, the staff of The New York Times Book Review conducts a running discussion over what belongs on its year-end Top 10 list. In this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz gathers a group of fel...

2 Des 20251h 18min

History has not graced us with many details about Shakespeare as a person, but we do know that he and his wife had three children, including a son named Hamnet who died at the age of 11 in 1596, four ...

28 Nov 20251h 2min

Literature isn’t a horse race. Taste is subjective, and artistic value can’t be measured in terms of “winners" and “losers.”That doesn’t mean it’s not fun to try.The book world’s awards season officia...

22 Nov 202546min

Nicholas Boggs’s “Baldwin: A Love Story,” is many things at once. It’s a comprehensive biography of James Baldwin. It’s a nimble excavation of Baldwin’s work, filled with astute literary analysis of h...

14 Nov 202536min