Jen Vafidis

The Southern writer’s religious zeal was off-putting to a lot of her peers, but a newly discovered prayer journal reveals why she needed God in her writing

<p>What is it about Sholem Aleichem’s stories of a poor milkman in the shtetl that has audiences bewitched for nearly 50 years after the smash musical debuted on Broadway? Jen Vafidis on a new cultural history of <i>Fiddler</i>.</p>

From a Hungarian novelist’s newest to a biography of Richard Wagner.

From the Haitian master Edwidge Danticat’s new novel to the social history of the U.S. capital during the Civil War.

From a novel of Brooklyn neuroses to what happens when evangelicals take over an Alaskan national park.

From a 1980s literary superstar’s return to a study of American trailblazers with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

From a book steeped in all the strange junk that we’re obsessed with in the contemporary world to a novel of the Cold War experience told through ghost stories.

From a young girl’s real-life diary of her time in a concentration camp, to John le Carré’s new novel taking on the war on terror.

Renata Adler only wrote two novels, but they establish her as the chronicler of an ossified generation unable to move forward. By Jen Vafidis.