“I’ve turned paranoid lately. When I’m in an airport, I look at the people around me at the gate, trying to suss out who might make a good ally if things went bad. I carry two plastic tubs full of warm clothes, hiking boots, and first-aid supplies in the back of my Subaru at all times. I have as large a volume of canned and dry goods in my pantry and laundry room as the shelves will hold.” Rebecca Onion for Slate on the appeal and contagion of “prepper fiction.” Pair with our review of Claire Vaye Watkins‘s Gold Fame Citrus, one of the recent bumper crop of apocalyptic narratives.
Post-Apocalypse Now
Contemporary Arabic Novels
Claudia Roth Pierpont writes about the contemporary Arabic novel in this week's New Yorker, highlighting Iraqi, Palestinian, and Egyptian examples.
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New Year, New Interviews
For their first interview of 2013, The Rumpus talks to Zadie Smith, who also, if you'll recall, told us about her Year in Reading last month.
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Finding the Fairy Tale Capital
Where is the fairy tale capital of the world? Atlas Obscura investigates. We write about the problem with fairy tales.
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Tar Pit Blues
Recommended Reading: Alexander Aciman on Canto 22 of Dante’s Inferno. (His essay is part of a series I’ve written about before.)
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“You have always been a dark labyrinth”
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