Zyzzyva Magazine – WINTER 2025-2026
Category Archives: Arts & Literature
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT – DECEMBER 12, 2025
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: The latest issue features ‘A Snail’s Tale – An unpublished story by Sylvia Townsend Warner…
Prince of the printed word
Tactful notes from a literary self-promoter By Nicola Shulman
Object of attention
Marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth By Devoney Looser
Wise fools
Irritating professors for the ages By Peter Thonemann
The Pursuit and the End
An unpublished story by Sylvia Townsend Warner, with a commentary by Peter Swaab By Sylvia Townsend Warner
THE PARIS REVIEW ———- WINTER 2025/2026
THE PARIS REVIEW : The latest issue features Art of Criticism, Art of Poetry, Prose, Poetry and Art…
Hélène Cixous on the Art of Criticism: “There’s a feminist discourse that women can’t do it all. This is what many women experience, and it’s very difficult. But I am not like that.”
Alice Oswald on the Art of Poetry: “You come at poetry with the momentum of having failed. It’s only when other communication is absolutely impossible that a poem has to exist.”
Prose by Eve Babitz, Marlene Morgan, Alec Niedenthal, Gwendoline Riley, and Elias Rodriques.
Poetry by Millicent Borges Accardi, Monzer Masri, Alice Oswald, Jana Prikryl, and Ed Roberson.
Art by Ali Banisadr, Pippa Garner, Joan Jonas, and Mieko Meguro; cover by Adebunmi Gbadebo.
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS – WINTER 2025-2026
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue of LARB features ‘Security’…
A Mole in MAGA’s Midst
Alexandre Lefebvre reads “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right” by Laura K. Field.
The Secessionists of Shasta County
Nevin Kallepalli investigates political resentment in rural California, in an essay from LARB Quarterly no. 47: “Security.”
Is Justice Barrett Listening?
Leah Litman prosecutes Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s new legal memoir, “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.”
An Emergency Born of Prosperity
Zoe Adams considers “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America” by Brian Goldstone.
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 15, 2025
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features ‘Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet’s “Christmas Avenue”’ – The celebratory chaos of the season.
The Trump Administration’s Chaos in the Caribbean
Pete Hegseth’s conduct is a case study in how the government’s growing sense of heedlessness and unaccountability is shaping disastrous policy. By Jonathan Blitzer
Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?
The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality. By Rachel Aviv
How to Leave the U.S.A.
In the wake of President Trump’s reëlection, the number of aggrieved Americans seeking a new life abroad appears to be rising. The Netherlands offers one way out. By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
LITERARY REVIEW – DECEMBER 2025
LITERARY REVIEW : The latest issue features Peter Marshall on Holbein * Joanna Kavenna on Camus * Sophie Oliver on Margaret Atwood * Dorian Lynskey on George Orwell * Daisy Dunn on Clodia of Rome * David Andress on Jean-Paul Marat * John Foot on the Spanish Civil War * Jerry White on high-rise buildings * Edward Shawcross on Mexico * Daniel A Bell on the Chinese examination system * Anna Reid on Russian women * Charles Darwent on Barnett Newman * Robert Crawford on T S Eliot * Ian Sansom on William Golding * Mark Lawson on John Updike * Charles Shaar Murray on musicians * Patrick Porter on NATO * Thomas Morris on Renaissance diagrams * Diane Purkiss on palmistry * Nigel Andrew on penguins * John Mullan on pedants * Molly Pepper Steemson on Anthony Bourdain * Mark Ford on Helen Vendler * Emma Smith on book
Holbein: Renaissance Master By Elizabeth Goldring
It’s an irony to savour: the man who invented the Tudors was a German. If Henry VIII, his wives and courtiers exercise a stronger hold on the public imagination than their Plantagenet precursors or Stuart successors, it is because we can all picture them so clearly. That, in turn, is due to an extraordinary sequence of portraits and drawings produced between the late 1520s and early 1540s by Hans Holbein of Augsburg (c 1497–1543), many of which have become instantly recognisable.
Doublethink & Doubt
Orwell: 2+2=5 By Raoul Peck (dir)
George Orwell: Life and Legacy By Robert Colls
Nobody under the age of seventy-five has heard George Orwell’s voice. The only extant video footage is in a silent movie of the Eton Wall Game. None of his many wartime recordings for the BBC Eastern Service has survived. By all accounts his voice, damaged by a bullet to the throat during the Spanish Civil War, was thin, flat and weak. In fact, the controller of the BBC Overseas Service complained that putting on ‘so wholly unsuitable a voice’ made the BBC appear ‘ignorant of the essential needs of the microphone and of the audience’.
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 8, 2025
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features ‘Klaas Verplancke’s “White House of Gold” – Mar-a-Lago extravagance on Pennsylvania Avenue.
In the Line of Fire
During the Trump era, political violence has become an increasingly urgent problem. Elected officials from both parties are struggling to respond. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
The Undermining of the C.D.C.
The Department of Health and Human Services maintains that it is hewing to “gold standard, evidence-based science”—doublespeak that might unsettle Orwell. By Dhruv Khullar
What Makes Goethe So Special?
The German poet’s dauntingly eclectic accomplishments were founded on a tireless interrogation of how a life should be lived. By Merve Emre
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS – DECEMBER 4, 2025 PREVIEW
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: The latest issue features ‘Robert Frost’s ugly feelings’….
Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry by Adam Plunkett
Short Cuts: A Bridge across the Humber
Undaunted Mind: The Intellectual Life of Benjamin Franklin by Kevin J. HayesIngenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist by Richard Munson
A Common Grave: Being Catholic in English America by Susan Juster
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 1, 2025
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features Malika Favre’s and Rea Irvin’s Eustace Tilley – The covers for the fourth and final centenary special issue.
The Justice Department Hits a New Low with the Epstein Files
Not only is the department’s behavior not normal; it is also, as is becoming increasingly clear, self-defeating. By Ruth Marcus
Disappeared to a Foreign Prison
The Trump Administration is deporting people to countries they have no ties to, where many are being detained indefinitely or forcibly returned to the places they fled. By Sarah Stillman
The Airport-Lounge Wars
When you’re waiting for a flight, what’s the difference between out there and in here? By Zach Helfand
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – NOVEMBER 24, 2025
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features Kenton Nelson’s “Early Morning” – Opening hours.
The Meaning of Trump’s Presidential Pardons
The President granted two hundred and thirty-eight pardons and commutations in his first term; less than a year into his second, he has issued nearly two thousand. By Benjamin Wallace-Well
Stephen Fry Is Wilde at Heart
The polymathic entertainer has had a lifelong bond with the wittiest—and the most tortured—of writers. And now he’s starring in “The Importance of Being Earnest.” By Rebecca Mead
Why the Time Has Finally Come for Geothermal Energy
It used to be that drawing heat from deep in the Earth was practical only in geyser-filled places such as Iceland. But new approaches may have us on the cusp of an energy revolution. By Rivka Galchen
