Full Stop

If Walter Benjamin’s angel of history moved backwards, observing society’s wreckage but blind to its progress, the many avatars of Joe’s wandering generation — booted boys in Cuba, beatnik wanderers like Joe — saw the whole world blurry, victims of their own velocity.

It expertly weaves its politics into a psychologically complex story that centers a character, and her desires, frustrations, and emotions, who is not commonly represented in either Colombian or international literature.

Rollerball and Death Race 2000 may have been early entrants into diagnosing that dreadful feeling that accompanies the unbeatable supremacy of capitalism.

“Illustrated literature hasn’t really been popular since the nineteenth century. I would like to open the discussion around that form again, to see what we can do with it.”

It expertly weaves its politics into a psychologically complex story that centers a character, and her desires, frustrations, and emotions, who is not commonly represented in either Colombian or international literature.

The Inland Sea demonstrates both what realist fiction can offer, as we try harder to grapple with climate crisis, and what it can’t.

for nigh-on end of season came the apex of her woe

Arguably, much of what is beguiling in Diana Taylor’s approach lies in her refusal to be defeated by the negative dimension of critique; rather, she embraces a relationship with political failure, by focusing precisely on what such failure might produce.

“Illustrated literature hasn’t really been popular since the nineteenth century. I would like to open the discussion around that form again, to see what we can do with it.”

“Are these instances magic? Are they myths? To us, they’re just part of life.”

You have to look beyond the monster itself in order to understand what it actually means.

Within the violence of that work I find a space to explore myself, a hostile and empty space with which to reconfigure myself.

If Walter Benjamin’s angel of history moved backwards, observing society’s wreckage but blind to its progress, the many avatars of Joe’s wandering generation — booted boys in Cuba, beatnik wanderers like Joe — saw the whole world blurry, victims of their own velocity.

Rollerball and Death Race 2000 may have been early entrants into diagnosing that dreadful feeling that accompanies the unbeatable supremacy of capitalism.

The bookmobile’s appropriation by the small press community, although on a relatively small scale, played a crucial role in forming independent publishing communities.

Imagining the mass strike and practically organizing it are one and the same activity.

Building an audible nest for intensifying, as a bird might shed drab feathers for bright ones in a time of courtship, an ordinary song for a mating call, my sonic ornament was a customized flush of puberty, a condensed libidinal vehemence.

Publishing’s leaders composed careful statements in the height of this summer’s protests for racial justice. But these ring hollow in the face of an industry rife with sexism, classism, and racism.

We discuss travel writing, its pitfalls, and what might come after the pandemic … if there’s really going to be an after.

The year’s best books, as selected by the editors of Full Stop.