FICTION

José Saramago AN EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL Death With Interruptions
The child's mother was sobbing and repeating over and over, My son, my father, and her sister came and embraced her, weeping and saying, It's better like this, it's better like this, the life these poor unfortunates were living was no life at all.

J. C. Hallman ETHAN: A LOVE STORY
Sky Meadow was protected at its base by a gatehouse and a team of geriatric guards in gray uniforms who controlled the white tube arm that blocked passage into the community.

Christopher R. Howard INTELLIGENT PEOPLE SPEAKING REASONABLY
A web of china white from each of the three bullet holes had spread across the windshield in front of the driver's chest. The subsequent burst took the driver's head.

Adam Braver THE CASKET, A COMPLETE EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL NOVEMBER 22, 1963
People ran chaotically. Newspapermen scurried for telephones. Elected officials milled. Congressmen. Senators. A general stood with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, as though he might blow the place to smithereens.

NEW VOICE FICTION

Natalie Bakopoulos FRESCO, BYZANTINE
They had come of age in such places, those island prisons—during the Nazi occupations, during the civil war, throughout the fifties, and now—and now some were growing old there.

POETRY

Mary Szybist
ANNUNCIATION IN Byrd and Bush
ANNUNCIATION IN Nabokov and Starr (complete poem)

Marvin Bell
COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHY

Kevin Young
MAY DAY BLUES
RING OF FIRE
LIME LIGHT BLUES

Ethan J. Hon
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

INTERVIEW

A CONVERSATION WITH THOMAS FRANK
Win McCormack talks with Thomas Frank about his new book, The Wrecking Crew, which surveys the devastating impact of conservative governance on America.

ESSAYS & FEATURES

Barry Sanders AMERICA: A VERY BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
You know there's something happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? It's high time to find out.

Nick Flynn PROTEUS (TORTURE AND BEWILDERMENT)
Here I am, my fingers tight around Proteus's neck, asking that same question, over and over, as if the answer exists, inside the maniac, inside the prisoner, inside the beloved, inside my mother, inside my father, inside me, as if the answer is there and just needs to be released.

Christopher R. Beha THE STUDY OF PERFECTION
William F. Buckley and T.S. Eliot aside, you're free to be a conservative in literature and a liberal in politics.

Francine Prose OUT FROM UNDER THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
The author wrestles with the slippery question: What makes a work of art political?

Wallace Shawn THE UNOBTRUSIVES
With the country riven by class divisions and drunk on imperial hubris, the writer and actor can't help but wonder what role the inhabitants of the Mansion of Arts and Letters have to play in our political destiny.

Bruce Handy, Tim Bower INTERNMENT, A GRAPHIC ESSAY
From the Japanese internment camps of World War II to Guantanamo, a graphic query into what was and is being done in our names.

Win McCormack THE END OF DEMOCRACY?
With the United States losing influence in the world and the rise of authoritarian capitalism in China and Russia, the future of democracy looks tenuous. But can either system survive?

Cynthia Ozick, Dorothy Allison, Charles Baxter, John Barth, Junot Díaz, George Saunders, Lydia Davis, Lydia Millet, and more THREE QUESTIONS
A truly Olympic dream team of writers answers the following questions: What do you fear most about the future? What gives you hope for the future? And, is there a book—fiction or non—that captures your political sensibility?

Slavoj Zizek SEXUALITY IN THE ATONAL WORLD
Masturbation may be the ideal sexuality for the internet age. The Slovenian cultural critic explains the failure of love in contemporary Western society, summoning French novelist Michel Houellebecq to help.

D.W. Gibson ENGAGE CHRISTIAN MOUNZEO
What good is truth if it goes unsaid? Citizens of the Republic of the Congo know all too well the evils of censorship, as they struggle with their country's oil industry and its rampant damage to the environment.

Brian Evenson THE REFINER'S FIRE
Joseph Smith still reigns as the best fiction writer Mormonism has produced. The author prophesizes that he won't be dethroned anytime soon.

Curtis White TAKE BACK YOUR EMPTINESS
Let's get real and acknowledge all the lies we've been told so many times and so effectively that we've internalized them.

Mazen Kerbaj NEW WAR
These pen-and-ink drawings, dispatched from Lebanon, struggle with how to represent the conflict there and, more broadly, life under siege.

David Rees GET YOUR WAR ON
As a cult phenomenon, this cartoon series has provided an apt and hilarious outlet that sheds light on the ills of the Bush Administration.

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga ADAPT AND INNOVATE
The Daily Kos creator shows how Ukraine's Orange Revolution succeeded, not by being the first effort to oust the tyrannical regime of Leonid Kuchma, but by mobilizing the masses through the Internet.

LOST & FOUND

Michael Kobre
ON THE FILM Black Hawk Down

Kim Adrian
ON VALENTIN PAPADIN'S Teach Yourself to be a Madman

Tom Grimes
ON NORMAN MAILER'S Miami and the Siege of Chicago

Judith Paterson
ON LILLIAN SMITH'S Strange Fruit and Killers of the Dream

Mark Statman
ON JOSÉ MARÍA HINOJOSA (complete writing)

Edward J. Hill
ON ELDRIDGE CLEAVER'S Soul on Ice

Win McCormack
ON URSULA LE GUIN'S The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

WORD GAME

Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon
A CAUSTIC ACROSTIC

LAST WORD

Eduardo Galeano OBJETOS PERDIDOS
The twentieth century, which was born proclaiming peace and justice, died bathed in blood.