April comes and April goes, and May, and June, all passing by without shedding a drop of rain. The sky has been a blue desert since spring. The sun rises every morning, a bright white disk growing 

His story, as the story of every one of us, started long before we were born. For dynasties, our town provided the imperial families their most reliable servants. Eunuchs they are called, though out of 

Yiyun Li on Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace.’

‘Even the Dogs’ refuses to avert its eyes from difficulty, eliminating the customary safe distance separating characters from the reader.