“Do you love her?” my wife said at some point. It was maybe three weeks after the surgery, and I was about to be discharged from the hospital. I was walking again, but needed a cane.

Making oneself at home in prison

We exchanged stories of our hosts in a sort of competition, observing everything they did like anthropologists or comedians. One of us slept on a fold-out couch in the kitchen. One suspected that the “uncle” who visited the family weekly, while the father was away in Switzerland, was actually the mother’s lover.

The renowned violinist on the joys and intensities of creative life.

In Lithuania, going astray while picking mushrooms is a common experience, with its own word. The same word is used to describe veering from the plot of a story—like my father did when he talked about his time in Vietnam.

The whole right side of Nancy’s body, the side closest the ledge, prickled with horror and disgust. The wind lifted and tugged at her hair, and her head echoed with her own ineffective shouts. She stood frozen by the ledge that the baby bird had just tumbled off.

Five contemporary writers and critics discuss how climate change is represented in novels, film, comic books, and even in the works of Plato.

We were made to suffer. Mostly, / the man you love doesn’t know you

The author discusses marriage, #MeToo, and how we are all vectors on a vast grid of animal drives.

Grandmother searched the house inside and out, but I was nowhere to be found. Fearful of how Heaven might curse them and filled with pity for her daughter-in-law and poor little granddaughters, she filled a porcelain bowl with cold water, placed it on a small, legged tray and sat out back, rubbing her palms together in prayer.