Books & Fiction: The Two Sides of Ha Jin

Plus: Flash Fiction by Eugene Lim, and new poetry by Mary Jo Bang and Nick Laird. View in browser | Update your preferences Books The Two Sides of Ha Jin His early stories of China deployed unsparing brutality, but his latest novel shows his affinity for stoicism, irony, and modesty. By Joan Acocella The Writer’s Voice: Fiction from the Magazine Emma Cline Reads “The Iceman” The author reads her story from the August 23, 2021, issue of the magazine. Books Briefly Noted “From the Streets of Shaolin,” “Distant Fathers,” “Brotherhood,” and “The Woman from Uruguay.” Flash Fiction Flash Fiction “What We Have Learned, What We Will Forget, What We Will Not Be Able to Forget” “The plot of this short story is: A succession of identical days pass.” By Eugene Lim From the Archive Sci-Fi Take Me Home Ray Bradbury was born a hundred and one years ago tomorrow. Just before his death, in 2012, he wrote about his grandfather and the birth of his love for science fiction: “I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, ‘Take me home!’ ” By Ray Bradbury Poetry Poems “From Another Approach” “The year is still the perpetual now / refusing to escape its frame.” By Mary Jo Bang Poems “Theodicy” “A human is not such a perfect machine.” By Nick Laird More from The New Yorker The New Yorker Live David Byrne and Ruben Santiago-Hudson Celebrate the Return of Broadway Next Monday, the minds behind the shows “American Utopia” and “Lackawanna Blues” will discuss Broadway’s comeback, exclusively for subscribers. Infinite Scroll How Social-Media Redesigns Manipulate Us A change like Twitter’s new Chirp font might seem subtle. The effects are anything but. By Kyle Chayka You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for Books & Fiction from The New Yorker. Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up. Unsubscribe | Manage your e-mail preferences | Send newsletter feedback | View our Privacy Policy Copyright © Condé Nast 2021. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.