Nonfiction

Essays

A Faceless Compass

Johannesburg’s haunted streets
Ivan Vladislavić
Essays

The Path to "River See"

How improvisation and ancestry shape a playwright's work
Sharon Bridgforth
Essays

Reclaiming Tituba

The real story behind Arthur Miller's character
Winsome Pinnock
Essays

Bottle Torches

A fantasia on Nari Ward
Ishion Hutchinson
Essays

Remembering Benares

The city that inspired The Romantics
Pankaj Mishra
Essay

Tender Light

The bond between photography and narrative
Emmanuel Iduma

Browse

Nonfiction

An old photograph of a churchyard cemetery. Courtesy The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Essays

A Journal of the Plague

The 1918 Influenza
Francis Russell
December 1, 1958
Blue stamps from WWII ration book
Essays

Note on the Home Front

I shall never forget that first winter of gasoline rationing
Eve Riehle
September 1, 1945
A photograph of a London street during WWII.
Essays

After a Visit to England

London during the Blitz
Thornton Wilder
September 1, 1941
Propaganda poster of Leon Trotsky
From the Archives

Hitler’s National Socialism

Leon Trotsky
December 1, 1933
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour

Vita Sackville-West
September 1, 1929
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
From the Archives

Street Haunting: A London Adventure

Virginia Woolf
October 1, 1927
A painting of a woman reading at a table.
From the Archives

How Should One Read a Book?

Read as if one were writing it
Virginia Woolf
September 1, 1926
Letters

Niki de Saint Phalle's Inner World

A selection of the French artist's letters
Nicole Rudick
Ideas

The All Play No Fun Economy

How did we end up teetering between euphoria and exhaustion?
Jessikah Díaz
A portrait of Heaney O Connor

The Impact of Translation

Seamus Heaney