Every Mann

Every Mann

Thomas Mann: New and Selected Stories By Thomas Mann. Translated by Damion Searls. Liveright, 2023. Hardcover, 256 pages, $40.00. Reviewed by Joshua Hren. Thomas Mann towers intimidatingly over the twentieth century’s literary landscape, not least because “the icy...
All That’s Left is This Foundation Stone

All That’s Left is This Foundation Stone

The Commonwealth: Poems By Dan Rattelle. Little Gidding Press, 2022. Paperback, 34 pages, $9.99. Reviewed by Joshua Hren. Wordsworth’s complaint in the Lyrical Ballads Preface (1800) might well have been written last Tuesday at 2:00 a.m. (lost already among too many...
‘God, If There Was a God’

‘God, If There Was a God’

Missionaries: A Novel by Phil Klay. Penguin Press, 2020, Hardcover, 416 pages, $28. Reviewed by Joshua Hren It isn’t surprising that Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity begins by immersing us in the rejection thereof, the highways of doubt and the...
Beha’s Capacity for God: Sophie Wilder Revisited

Beha’s Capacity for God: Sophie Wilder Revisited

What Happened to Sophie Wilder: A Novel by Christopher R. Beha. Tin House Books, 2012. Paperback, 253 pages, $16. Reviewed by Joshua Hren In his new novel The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, Harper’s editor Christopher Beha makes grace a noisome concern, not least...
Prin’s Original Fictions

Prin’s Original Fictions

Original Prin: A Novel by Randy Boyagoda. Biblioasis, 2019. Paperback, 224 pages, $15. Reviewed by Joshua Hren Toward the end of Original Prin our protagonist Princely St. John Umbiligoda sifts through the Duty-Free shop in the Dragomans airport only to find the...