Zadie Smith, The Fraud

Zadie Smith, The Fraud

Zadie Smith is fed up. Her most recent novel, The Fraud, is about a famous criminal trial of a potential grand fraud and his obsessed followers, about the bombastic pettiness of the literary world (in 19th century London, but…), and also about the historical crimes and disasters that take place while we’re looking elsewhere, or that we’re seeing through our own layers of misinformation. In particular, she’d like us to actually face up to our tendency to place ourselves and our preferred stories about the world at the center of everything. She is, however, fed up in a particularly Zadie Smith way: insightful, nuanced, hilarious. She’s not just judging bad behavior, she’s curious about confusion and self-delusion. She wants to know everyone’s stories, and though she definitely has opinions, she understands how and why we get it so wrong. Which doesn’t stop her from being wicked funny about pretension, self-inflation, and the excuses we make for ourselves.

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Caroline Kim on Mariko Nagai’s Georgic: Stories

Caroline Kim on Mariko Nagai’s Georgic: Stories

(Guest post by Caroline Kim)

I came across Mariko Nagai’s Georgic: Stories by mistake. During the time I volunteered at Hyphen Magazine, it got sent to me, the fiction editor, instead of to its rightful recipient, the book reviews editor. I had often watched in envy as she received a pile of books at our bimonthly meetings, so when I got my own slim, brown package, I did not hand it over to her right away. I took it home, opened it to the first story, read the beginning paragraphs, and immediately emailed her to ask if I could write a review of it.

Talk about the right book at the right time.

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