Books - Quillette

The Sardonic Inferno

At its best, Amis’s fiction broke open the locked door behind which our culture tries to keep its skeletons hidden.

Matt Hanson

2 Jun 2023 · 6 min read

The Dualism of Duluoz

An eagerly awaited new edition of Gerald Nicosia’s splendid Kerouac biography provides the definitive portrait of a great artist and a profoundly troubled man.

David S. Wills

1 Jun 2023 · 15 min read

The Hammett and Chandler of Gay Detective Fiction

How the books of George Baxt and Joseph Hansen changed the genre.

Kevin Mims

30 May 2023 · 16 min read

The Girl of the Endless Summer

How ‘Gidget’ helped to put surfing on the map.

Kevin Mims

12 May 2023 · 20 min read

The Man Who Invented the Modern Cop Novel

Joseph Wambaugh’s crime fiction has been much imitated but seldom equalled.

Kevin Mims

23 Apr 2023 · 20 min read

Orwell and Socialism

Reflections on the Western Left’s fragmented ideology.

Michael C. Anderson

21 Apr 2023 · 7 min read

How Do We Define ‘Life’?

An excerpt from 'The Edge of Knowledge: Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos.'

Lawrence M. Krauss

17 Apr 2023 · 5 min read

Remembering Rumpole

John Mortimer’s fictional barrister was—like his creator—a rogue redeemed by a fierce commitment to the presumption of innocence.

Kevin Mims

1 Apr 2023 · 18 min read

A Jolly Good Scoundrel

Three Cheers for Harry Flashman!

Graham Daseler

17 Mar 2023 · 14 min read

Hormones First. Research Later

A Review of Hannah Barnes’s ‘Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children‘

Bernard Lane

14 Mar 2023 · 14 min read

Do We Still Need a Women’s Prize for Fiction?

It is time to consider retiring awards segregated by the sex of the author.

Josh Allan

10 Mar 2023 · 6 min read

The Eyes of Another

Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, ‘Crime and Punishment,’ offers a radical reinterpretation of guilt and redemption.

Marilyn Simon

31 Jan 2023 · 7 min read

In Memoriam

A tribute to five pop fiction writers we lost in 2022.

Kevin Mims

20 Dec 2022 · 12 min read

How Do They Know This?

An informative and apolitical new book reminds us that statistics are not always what they seem.

Christopher J. Snowdon

8 Dec 2022 · 5 min read

Islamist Terror; Journalistic Error

In a valuable new book, historian Richard Landes argues that Western reporting on the Second Palestinian Intifada helped to seed a misunderstanding of terrorism.

Jeffrey Herf

2 Dec 2022 · 19 min read