Anna Della Subin

‘Her Own Cuneiform’

The poet Dunya Mikhail is preoccupied with Iraq’s urgent present, but she studies it with the care of an archaeologist exhuming relics of the deep past.

A Body That’s Divine

A recent book catalogs the Old Testament’s physical descriptions of God, who ate, probably drank, got mistaken for an ordinary man, and was likely circumcised.

The Rules of the Confidence Game

The Book of Charlatans provides an unusual glimpse into the street life of medieval Islamic societies rarely captured in more elevated Arabic literary sources.

How Arabic Made It New