NYT Books

After winning the Nobel Prize for her searing portraits of the Soviet world unraveling, Svetlana Alexievich worries about the revival of its violent, anti-democratic ways.

The devil, Prada-clad or not, stays on the periphery of Caroline Palmer’s “Workhorse,” a novel about an ambitious assistant at a Vogue-like publication.

In “Splendid Liberators,” Joe Jackson presents the U.S. wars in Cuba and the Philippines as part of a misguided project to spread freedom across the world.

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature for books often called bleak and challenging. But they’re also comical and deeply human.

​The prize committee said the Hungarian writer’s work “reaffirms the power of art.”

“Minor Black Figures” encompasses race, class, religion and art, but at its heart it’s really about “what happens when you encounter a priest at a bar one hazy summer night in New York.”

The awards are being announced this week.

In “The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus,” Matthew Restall explores the seemingly immortal reputation of one of history’s most projected-on figures.

“I wanted to tell a story that encompassed the gender spectrum,” said Tonatiuh, who transformed his body to play the queer window dresser Luis Molina.

The author of the Seeds of America trilogy recommends books that run the gamut from Native American history to the civil rights movement.