Books & Culture

Can the fifty-four-year-old arts hub weather the next four years?

The novelist discusses her new book, “Audition,” the role of performance in everyday life, and the trick of crafting a narrative that functions as a “Rorschach blot.”

In “Magazine Dreams,” the actor—who was found guilty of assault—plays a bodybuilder undone by the pressures of image-making. Majors has relied on the slippage between character and actor to facilitate his rebrand.

A fiftysomething writer’s quest to get injectables.

The late political scientist enjoined readers to look for opposition to authoritarian states not in revolutionary vanguards but in acts of quiet disobedience.

In “Darkenbloom,” by the Austrian novelist Eva Menasse, the citizens of a European border town have secrets they’d prefer to forget.

“The Crossing,” “Powers of Reading,” “Dream State,” and “Tilt.”

Fourteen years after the Fukushima disaster, nuclear power is being rebranded as a climate savior, and fission is in fashion.

The first piece Kael wrote for The New Yorker, “Movies on Television,” suggests why she remains a vexing influence in cinema more than a half century later.

Two new dramas—from the Vietnamese director Truong Minh Quy, and from the Portuguese director Miguel Gomes—embark on hypnotic, mind-bending treks between past and present.

Igor Bezinović’s film thrusts century-old archival footage into the present, restaging the brazen reign of an autocrat whose tactics feel startlingly resonant today.

The Portuguese director, who made twenty-two features after the age of eighty, rejuvenated the art of movies by linking personal experience to the arc of history.

A new restaurant from the team behind Dame and Lord’s doesn’t so much enter the seafood conversation as elegantly commandeer it.

In the eighties, a Punjabi immigrant bought an old Italian restaurant in San Francisco. The dish he pioneered became a phenomenon.

Our food critic answers a reader’s question about alternatives to the beleaguered chicken egg.

The ne plus ultra of expense-account dining is making a comeback, with help from the indefatigable French chef Daniel Boulud.

The Michelle Williams-led series, about a woman seeking erotic fulfillment amid a terminal diagnosis, starts off as an unorthodox comedy—then deepens into something far better.

In “Ludwig,” David Mitchell tries to solve mysteries—and the problem of being a person in the world.

Widowers drive the plots of “Paradise,” “Severance,” and “American Primeval,” to poignant effect.

The Netflix series, about a thirteen-year-old killer, attempts to grapple with the crisis facing boys today—but its true sympathies lie with the baffled adults around them.

Dozens of audience members have lost consciousness watching Eline Arbo’s adaptation of “The Years.” The internet has come to believe that a conspiracy is afoot.

Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk try to close the deal in David Mamet’s classic, and George Clooney stars in a timely portrait of media courage.

A splashy new production of the play may give a sense of where Shakespeare productions are heading.

Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal lack direction, and “The Trojans,” a spirited football-themed Iliad, heads for the end zone.

Nine years after retiring his alter ego, Pat the Bunny, Patrick Schneeweis is ready to sing again.

Yunchan Lim tackles Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and Seong-Jin Cho presents a Ravel marathon.

The award-winning pianist on the relationship between music and politics—and on five books that hold them in tension.

Edmond Dédé’s “Morgiane” shows how diversity initiatives can promote works of real cultural value.