Homecoming
by Bernhard Schlink (Pantheon, $24)
Bernhard Schlink’s latest novel shouldn’t be as satisfying as it is, said Craig Seligman in Bloomberg.com. Grounded in a young German’s quest to learn how an unpublished war novel was supposed to end, it “goes off in a dozen directions.” Still the cultural questions it raises are riveting. “When I finished it I was ready to go back to the first page and start reading again.”
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Wolves of the Crescent Moon
by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed (Penguin, $14)
This atmospheric tale about a bus-station vagrant nearly qualifies as the first great Saudi Arabian novel, said Benjamin Lytal in The New York Sun. Populated by a host of Riyadh outcasts, the book never reconciles its hero’s gloomy fatalism with his bandit past. But its author is “an honest literary pioneer,” and Wolves teems with insights into a land cloaked by censorship.
The Painter of Battles
by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (Random House, $25)
A Balkan war veteran with a lethal grudge tracks down a former combat photographer in the latest from one of Spain’s most popular writers, said Alan Cheuse in the San Francisco Chronicle. Unfortunately, Arturo Pérez-Reverte seems intent on proving his gravitas, and he smothers the pair’s showdown with “page after page” of philosophical debate.
The Adventures of Amir Hamza
by Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami
(Modern Library, $45)
The first complete English translation of “the most popular oral epic” of the Indo-Islamic world is cause for celebration, said William Dalrymple in The New York Times. “A great miscellany of fireside yarns and shaggy-dog stories”—most concerning an uncle of the Prophet Mohammed—The Adventures of Amir Hamza grew to the equivalent of 46,000 pages by the early 20th century. This translation, based on a single-volume 1855 Urdu edition, is “endlessly diverting.”
Yalo
by Elias Khoury (Archipelago, $25)
Turning a rapist into a sympathetic narrator is no easy task, said John Freeman in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger. Elias Khoury’s “mesmerizing” new novel would have been stronger had it moved beyond the clouded perspective of its title character, an ex-Lebanese soldier whom interrogators are torturing into making a series of conflicting confessions. Even so, the feeling of being trapped inside Yalo’s desperate mind is heartbreaking.
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Disarming Hezbollah: Lebanon's risky missionTalking Point Iran-backed militia has brought 'nothing but war, division and misery', but rooting them out for good is a daunting and dangerous task
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Woof! Britain's love affair with dogsThe Explainer The UK's canine population is booming. What does that mean for man's best friend?
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Sudoku medium: August 31, 2025The Week's daily medium sudoku puzzle
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”