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Today in The New York Review of Books: Verlyn Klinkenborg considers the octopus; Marcela Turati memorializes the disappeared in Mexico; Joshua Hammer follows the Wagner Group’s trail of carnage across Africa and Ukraine; Catherine Nicholson studies King Lear alongside Chinese scholars; Duncan Hosie details the cruelty of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow ICE to detain people based on their physical appearance; a poem by Jane Hirshfield; and, from the archives, a Russian Futurist poem about autumn.

Verlyn Klinkenborg
‘Such Flexible Intensity of Life’

Their striking intelligence makes octopuses tempting subjects for wishful anthropomorphism and uncanny reminders of nature’s mysteries.

Marcela Turati, translated by Will Noah
Looking for Alicia

Finding a disappeared person in Mexico is like chasing a ghost through a labyrinth.

Joshua Hammer
Slaughter for Hire

From Africa to Ukraine, the rise and fall of the Wagner Group and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was marked by theatrical violence, the seizure of resources, and an utter lack of accountability.

Catherine Nicholson
The Cares of State

The scholar Nan Z. Da reveals how naturally Chinese history can be read through the cruelty and corruption in King Lear.

Cows Lying Down

a poem by
Jane Hirshfield

A Holstein cow lying down—
it would seem impossible
for such an awkward shape to return to standing…

Duncan Hosie
The End of Equity

By effectively sanctioning ICE’s raids in Los Angeles, the Supreme Court is showing its readiness to discard centuries of equitable tradition in law.

Free from the Archives

Tomorrow is the autumnal equinox, the beginning of the steady descent to winter and afternoon sunsets.

In the Review’s October 10, 1985, issue, we published a new translation of a 1915 poem by the Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov about the anxiety of the season.

Poem

by Velimir Khlebnikov, translated by Paul Schmidt

Autumn that year was a rabbit affair
and no eye could distinguish
the shivering season from the shaking beast.
Shifty, all yellow,
autumn-dweller color….

Is America Abandoning Immigrants?
Mass Deportation and Resistance

Thursday, September 25, 2025 at 5:00 PM EDT

The New York Review of Books presents a series of online talks hosted by our Advising Editor, Fintan O’Toole. For our first fall event, New York Review contributors Francisco Cantú, Caroline Moorehead, and Julia Preston join O’Toole for a wide-ranging conversation about America’s treatment of immigrants. The event is pay-what-you-wish.

Register Today!

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