New Directions

The fourth installment of Balle’s expansive, and highly ambitious On the Calculation of Volume teems with new faces, new people, and voices from every corner of the western worldWe’re a little more than halfway through Balle’s hypnotic, monumental seven-volume novel about a woman set adrift within the walls of November 18th. Balle’s riveting project continues to wring ever more fascinating dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal captives. In Book III we saw the addition of a handful of new characters to Tara’s world—fellow travelers within November 18th—and now Book IV heralds the arrival of many others, and soon to be even more, roaming uncertainly through the same November day. Could this be the first stirrings of an alternate civilization? The big house in Bremen turns into the headquarters for this growing group of time-trapped individuals. But who are they and what has happened to them? Are they loopers, repeaters, or returners? A brilliant modern spin on the myth of Babel in

Available in a beautiful print edition for the first time, this brilliant lecture delivered by László Krasznahorkai, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, reads like an unforgettable short storyAddressed to a rapt audience in Stockholm two days before being awarded his Nobel Prize, L嫳zl?Krasznahorkai's moving lecture asks: "Human being--astonishing creature--who are you?" In a message about hope (or his lack thereof), Krasznahorkai compassionately considers humanity and how, from our degraded current epoch, destruction might emerge --or rebellion.

Sato Reang enjoys an idyllic childhood of soccer, fighting crickets, and mischief in his Indonesian village--until the day he must be circumcised, and his observant father forces him into a life of Islamic piety. For years, Sato outwardly obeys his father, but all the while the boy chafes at the strictures of his religious routine, longing for everyday pleasures and vowing to himself that he will "become a child who was not pious." His freewheeling linked anecdotes--mixing worldliness and na鴳et? cruelty and innocence--are narrated with a toggling between first and third person ("I"/"he" or "Sato Reang") that potently conveys his disassociation. His adolescent, hormone-fueled crotchetiness expresses dissent: I stopped going to mosque. I no longer joined in worship. I never said my prayers before bed. Sato Reang eats with his left hand--so stupid--and barges in where he pleases, without calling out a greeting. If I was feeling lazy, I'd just piss on a banana tree, and I wouldn't wash mys

In seventeenth-century Denmark, Christenze Kruckow, an unmarried noblewoman, is accused of witchcraft. She and several other women are rumored to be possessed by the Devil, who has come to them in the form of a tall headless man who gives them dark powers: they can steal people's happiness, they have performed unchristian acts, and they can cause pestilence or death. They are all in danger of the stake.The Wax Child, narrated by a wax doll created by Christenze Kruckow, is an unsettling horror story about brutality and power, nature and witchcraft, set in the fragile communities of premodern Europe.Deeply researched and steeped in visceral, atmospheric detail, The Wax Child is based on a series of real witchcraft trials that took place in Northern Jutland in the seventeenth century. Full of lush storytelling and alarmingly rich imagination, Olga Ravn also weaves in quotes from original sources such as letters, magical spells and manuals, court documents, and Scandinavian grimoires.