Summer 2024 Online Edition

Check back as we add more features and reviews in the next months!

To see the table of contents of our Summer 2024 print issue, click here.

INTERVIEWS

FEATURES

57 Snapshots in Time: A Charles Bukowski Primer

Thirty years after Charles Bukowski’s passing, his spirit still looms large. To commemorate the author's birthday, Rain Taxi offers a thumbnail retrospective primer on the entirety of Bukowski’s prolific literary output.

By Abel Debritto

NONFICTION REVIEWS

The Garden Against Time

Olivia Laing’s new book presents gardening as a creative process, one just as involved with the imagination as writing can be.

Reviewed by Sarah Moorhouse

Arguing for a Better World

This new collection of essays by philosopher Arianne Shahvisi offer a refreshing amalgam of progressive politics and professorial pondering.

Reviewed by Josh Steinbauer

Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life

George Orwell’s contributions are many—though, as Anna Funder argues, it was the women in his life that made his success possible.

Reviewed by C.T. Wolf

FICTION REVIEWS

To Hell with Poets

Now available in a first English translation by Mirgul Kali, Baqytgul Sarmekova’s collection of stories offers something new in Kazakh literature.

Reviewed by Timothy Walsh

Brotherless Night

Now out in paperback, V. V. Ganeshananthan’s 2023 award-winning novel is at once a product of long and careful research and an amazing feat of empathic imagination.

Reviewed by Ann Klefstad

Walk the Darkness Down

The latest novel by Daniel Magariel doesn’t shy away from sad, even tragic, truths, but this story about a troubled marriage also suggests the possibility of hope.

Reviewed by Jonathan Fletcher

POETRY REVIEWS

A Year of Last Things

In Michael Ondaatje’s latest collection, a poetics of the transpersonal takes shape through objects cherished for their talismanic power to evoke the beloved.

Reviewed by Bill Tremblay

galáxias

This first full English translation of the magnum opus of Brazilian luminary Haroldo de Campos is an absolute triumph.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Zuba

Selected Poems: 1959-2022

This posthumous publication represents Neeli Cherkovski's long overdue recognition as one of the most essential poets of the Beat Generation.

Reviewed by Zack Kopp

Women on the Moon

Debora Kuan’s vulnerable new collection draws on her Asian-American roots to offer a refreshing take on modern femininity.

Reviewed by Julia Klahr

Stories and Poems of a Class Struggle
One Impossible Step

These new translations into English of work by poets Roque Dalton and Orides Fontela are vital. Reviewed by Patrick James Dunagan 

ART REVIEWS