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The Death of a Civil Servant
by Lev Grossman
Two of the twentieth century’s dominant literary traditions—modernism and fantasy—met as mismatched roommates in colonial Ceylon.

Ninjas I Have Known
by Stephen Phelan
It’s impossible to say with certainty that you’re not being stalked by a ninja right now. Also: that ninja may be Scottish.

A Sunburst Above a Receding Road
by Namwali Serpell
What happens when, pronouncing the names of Nabokov’s characters, they leave the page and end up in your mouth?

A Glimpse of Unplumbed Depths
by Annie Julia Wyman
What is the goal of Erich Auerbach’s monumental, doomed scholarship? Simply put, to better understand what it means to be alive.

Maureen Howard
in conversation with Joanna Scott
“The author may be absent from the work, but she’s left her dirty fingerprints all over the pages.”

Daniel Clowes
interviewed by Nicole Rudick
The cartoonist-genius responsible for Ghost World describes his start at Cracked magazine and his Peanuts-like new book.

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Lawrence Schiller
interviewed by Suzanne Snider
First Schiller bought Gary Gilmore’s life rights and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews. Then he hired Norman Mailer.

Bryan Garner
micro-interviewed by Josh Fischel
Is the Constitution a well-written document?

Real Life Rock Top Ten
by Greil Marcus

Musin’s and Thinkin’s
by Jack Pendarvis

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The Believer Book Award
by the Editors

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The Reader Survey

Creative Accounting: Performance and Installation
by M. Rebekah Otto

“Comics”
edited by Alvin Buenaventura

Stuff I’ve Been Reading
by Nick Hornby

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Charlie Smith’s Three Delays
reviewed by Rick Moody

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James Schuyler’s Other Flowers
reviewed by Daniel Handler

David Baker’s Never-Ending Birds
reviewed by Stephen Burt

Nin Andrews’s Southern Comfort
reviewed by Ken Tucker

Macedonio Fernández’s The Museum Of Eterna’s Novel
reviewed by Jessica Loudis

Sonallah Ibrahim’s Stealth
reviewed by M. Lynx Qualey

The Deer Path: A new poem
by Kathleen Ossip

Sedaratives
by Todd Hanson

Schema: Impossible Colors
by Jude Stewart