“"[Dad] pronounced the word ‘nudity’ as though a fruit fly had just flown into his mouth—he spat as he said it. The word mainly made me think of the potatoes whose jackets my mother peeled off every evening before she dropped them into the water,' writes Marieke Lucas Rijneveld in her debut novel, The Discomfort of Evening, translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison, which won the 2020 International Booker Prize. The observations of the young narrator couple a unique perspective, one that actively accrues knowledge, with the power of setting the tone for and foreshadowing the novel’s eventual tragedy, threading [...]

On the Mountain BY JOHN HAINES We climbed out of timber, bending on the steep meadow to look for berries, then still in the reddening sunlight went on up the windy shoulder. A shadow followed us up the mountain like a black moon rising. Minute by minute the autumn lamps on the slope burned out. Around us the air and the rocks whispered of night . . . A great cloud blew from the north, and the mountain vanished in the rain and stormlit darkness.

A Hymn to the Evening BY PHILLIS WHEATLEY Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain; Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing, Exhales the incense of the blooming spring. Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes, And through the air their mingled music floats. Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies are spread! But the west glories in the deepest red: So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow, The living temples of our God below! Fill'd with the praise of him who gives the light, And draws the sable curtains of the [...]