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From the archives

Daybooks

Counting the hours with Kate Cayley and Souvankham Thammavongsa

The Knot

A postmodern caper by Maria Reva

Survival Mode

A psychological novel by David Szalay

John Casey

John Casey is a critic from Montreal.

Articles by
John Casey

Empire State of Mind

Yiming Ma speculates November 2025
Yiming Ma’s debut joins a long tradition of speculative novels that craft an alternative history for the sake of illuminating the present moment. These Memories Do Not Belong to Us is set in a world where a single global superpower, the Qin Empire, has achieved total dominance. Details about the geopolitical situation within or beyond its borders are few and far…

Drive to Survive

Rob Benvie’s rueful and ruminative tale July | August 2025
Where should we place our faith in times of upheaval? Some might suggest family, God, money, government, literature, or television. Others might say the future, history, nature, ourselves alone, or nowhere at all. How, though, would we know that such faith was well placed? These grand questions and tentative answers reverberate across Rob Benvie’s ambitious and incantatory fourth…