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How to Read Sanskrit in Morningside Heights

November 18, 2025 Fiction

Excerpted from The Church of Mastery, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025

Or, to use some expressions which are nearest the heart of the Masters, it is necessary for the archer to become, in spite of himself, an unmoved center. Then comes the supreme and ultimate miracle: art becoming “artless,” shooting becomes not-shooting, a shooting without bow and arrow; the teacher becomes a pupil again, the Master a beginner, the end a beginning, and the beginning perfection.

—Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

Given all their invisible stresses, all their accumulated ambitions, and the narrowness of their paths, the Freedom Riders in Pursuit of Veracity agreed they needed to relax to prepare for their journey down South; relaxation is not a luxury, it is a requirement. America has a problem with Black people relaxing. Or behaving like a boss. That’s why William would spend an entire day now and again by himself like Jesus in the wilderness. He’d meander through the weirdest stacks of a downtown bookstore just to wander. Who knows what Language was destined to change you? That’s why he took up cricket with René from Port of Spain. Why he’d take Rowena out to restaurants they could not afford to order dishes he could not pronounce—spine straight, risking glares.

Yellowed Pages from the Front

November 18, 2025 Fiction

By ALEXANDRA LYTTON REGALADO

Excerpted from Drownproofing and Other Stories, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025.

Dr. Rafael Améndarez
San Francisco, California, United States of America

July 14, 1968

Srita. Liliam Améndarez
San Salvador, El Salvador, Central America

Greetings my always dear cousin, Lili!

Last week I was discharged from the hospital, and considering my life’s current hustle and bustle, just in case, I’ve decided to congratulate you in advance for your birthday. Congratulations a thousand times on that auspicious August 9.
A few days ago, by accident, I came across a letter among old and musty papers. One of those things one keeps without knowing why. Things that are stored away after reading them and are not read again until that day when unexpectedly, by chance, they appear in our hands. Imagine a letter written a whopping two decades ago! Yellowed by the years. A letter from a friend. This one dates back to World War II.

At that time, I was in France with the American army. I remember it was a freezing day, bitterly cold, in January 1944. There in the French Vosges, between Colmar and Strasbourg. That winter I remember vividly because it was extremely harsh. A man could be wounded and freeze within minutes. Climbing a mountain loaded with winter clothing, weapons, and ammunition, one would sweat, and that sweat running down the face, sliding, in a moment when one stopped to catch their breath, froze into ice splinters, which could be peeled off.

Sandwich

November 18, 2025 Fiction

By BETO CARADEPIEDRA

Excerpted from Jaguar, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025.

It was hard to stand out in the family alone. Benito’s parents, tías and tíos, valued children more than they valued money. They valued mothers more than they did models. When a man in the family became a father, he might as well have become a judge, or a reverend. You could be an arsonist, a seasoned gangster. You could even have slept with the priest. But if you became a parent, you would be alright in their eyes.

Tío Esteban was forty-one when he went to prison again. And Tía was older: forty-five. It didn’t seem likely that they would become parents, so all faith in them was lost.

Read Excerpts by Finalists for the Restless Books Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature 2025

November 18, 2025 News and Events

This year, 2025, marks the tenth anniversary of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, which supports immigrant writers whose work examines how immigration shapes our lives, our communities, and our world. In honor of the anniversary, Restless Books’ unstintingly generous board member, Steven G. Kellman—whose grandparents were immigrants to the United States—has endowed the prize so that it may continue in perpetuity. As ICE and federal agents invade our cities, we hope the newly named Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature can serve as a reminder that immigrants’ voices deserve to be heard. Anyone familiar with history knows that immigrants have always been the gravitational center of the extraordinary American experiment.

Of course, freedom is not only under siege in America, but all across the globe. As autocrats deny the rights of people in Palestine, in Sudan, in Ukraine to remain on their own land, forced displacement is happening everywhere.

The 2025 Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature was judged by Dinaw Mengestu, Rajiv Mohabir, and Ilan Stavans; the winner will be announced by LitHub on December 2. Please join us in celebrating the work of the following four finalists, and in holding up the power of immigrant stories to remind us of our common humanity. No one is free until all of us are free.

— Restless Books

What We’re Reading: November 2025

November 14, 2025 Reviews

Curated by KEI LIM

As you delve into our just-launched Issue 30, check out these recommendations from its contributors. JEN JABAILY-BLACKBURN, TAMAS DOBOZY, and ELSA LYONS bring you three reads to cozy up with as the days grow colder.

Olga Ravn’s The Employees (translated by Martin Aitken), recommended by Issue 30 Contributor Jen Jabaily-Blackburn

The Reading Life: How to Teach Your Introductory Workshop in Fiction the Day After Trump’s Re-election

November 13, 2025 Essays

By KAREN SHEPARD

The Reading Life is a special 15th-anniversary essay series reflecting on close reading and re-reading, written by The Common’s Editorial Board.

Consider not teaching, cancelling class, staying at home in bed.

Force yourself to go to campus anyway.

Remind the twelve undergraduates gathered around the seminar table that after the 2016 election, the historian Timothy Snyder published a tiny book called On Tyranny about how democracies fail and authoritarian systems thrive. Present your comments as a reminder. Recognize the pettiness of your annoyance that they haven’t heard of this book. Recognize that it may be misdirected. Understand that fist grabbing your heart as anger.

Translating Toward Possibility: Sarah Faux Interviews Mariam Rahmani

November 10, 2025 Interviews

Headshots of Sarah Faux and Mariam Rahmani

Sarah Faux (left) and Mariam Rahmani (right)

Friends for over a decade, MARIAM RAHMANI and SARAH FAUX have been connecting for years about their respective artistic practices. They recently spoke over Zoom for The Common: Sarah from her painting studio, and Mariam from her office in Vermont. In the following conversation, they discuss Mariam’s novel, Liquid, published earlier this year, which centers a queer Muslim woman who navigates 100 dates in one summer. They speak on how translating others’ work has served Mariam’s own voice in writing, and how messiness and uncertainty are at the heart of good literature.

2025 Author Postcard Auction

November 7, 2025 News and Events

I feel like the only person still sending postcards, but a pantheon of best-selling authors is taking up the practice for a good cause.”

—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

This holiday season, you could hear from one of your favorite authors—or have them write a missive to the book nerd on your gift list—all thanks to The Common. Authors will write and send postcards in time for the holidays, which in the past have featured personal anecdotes, original poems, and even doodles, making them a perfect gift for readers.

Bid here from November 10!

This one-of-a-kind online auction, as featured by The Washington Post’s Book Club newsletter and BookRiot, gives book lovers around the world the opportunity to bid on handwritten, personalized postcards from their favorite writers (plus a few actors and musicians too!). The postcards make great gifts for the literature-lovers in your life. Winning bids are tax-deductible donations. Our eleventh annual Author Postcard Auction runs from November 10 to December 1.

Two Poems by Ahmed Bouanani, translated by Lisa Mullenneaux

November 6, 2025 Poetry, Translation

By AHMED BOUANANI

Translated by LISA MULLENNEAUX

Portrait of person smiling and holding up their hand. Turned to the right.

Photo courtesy of Archives Bouanani

This country

My country is this horizon with blank pages
where I see skeletons of broken children
wandering, begging for the light of thin wisps
of stories that might finally appease them

In hands the color of amaranth magic
they hold hippogriffs like dogs
a talisman to protect themselves from the lover
with hair braided into black shapes

Tethered Hearts

November 5, 2025 Dispatches

By LARA ATALLAH

From Buenos Aires, Argentina

For Eduardo Rios Pulgar,

San Telmo rings through me, like an unlived memory from a distant past. All colors, linden trees, worn down buildings, from the last century and the one before it, next to towering cement. The Argentinian Peso crumbles like the Lebanese Lira. We collect its ruins at the casa de cambio, our American dollars grotesque in the face of this country’s protracted collapse. The city is angry with love. Its sidewalks echo Beirut, and a life there, long-forgotten, languishing in the rearview mirror. Everywhere I look, an almost-déjà-vu skims the walls of my mind. Buenos Aires is Beirut, is Paris, is an aubade to the lost and never found. Down by Recoleta, Haussmann buildings dot the avenues. Dregs of a time where French architects flooded the city and left their prints along its urban landscape.

How to Read Sanskrit in Morningside Heights

Yellowed Pages from the Front

Sandwich

Read Excerpts by Finalists for the Restless Books Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature 2025

What We’re Reading: November 2025

The Reading Life: How to Teach Your Introductory Workshop in Fiction the Day After Trump’s Re-election

Translating Toward Possibility: Sarah Faux Interviews Mariam Rahmani

2025 Author Postcard Auction

Bid here from November 10!

Two Poems by Ahmed Bouanani, translated by Lisa Mullenneaux

Tethered Hearts

Discover the extraordinary in The Common.

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