Ellis Island, by Małgorzata Szejnert, translated from the Polish by Sean Gasper Bye (Scribe). This “people’s history” comprises intimate views of Ellis Island both from immigrants and from staff, including doctors, social workers, commissioners, and interpreters (among them the future mayor Fiorello LaGuardia). Policies were shaped by anti-Semitism, fear of Communism, and xenophobia, and monthly immigration quotas in the twenties led to “a peculiar type of boat race” in New York Harbor, as ships rushed to deliver their passengers. Szejnert also records the idealism and the compassion of those employed there—such as the social worker who gave new arrivals stylish American clothing—many of whom were immigrants themselves.
Think Least of Death, by Steven Nadler (Princeton). Aiming to extract life lessons from the philosophy of Spinoza, this vibrant study focusses on the concept of “homo liber,” or the free person, a supremely rational figure continually striving for power and virtue. Often considered an impossible ideal, homo liber, in Nadler’s reading, becomes a universal, accessible model of ethical living. Addressing Spinoza’s view of the mind as an “agonistic arena,” in which ideas based on truth compete with ones based on incomplete or false knowledge, Nadler argues that we can enable virtue simply by seeking truth. While the reverse also holds—false knowledge deprives us of the necessary basis for rational, virtuous action—Spinoza’s work serves as a hopeful, timely statement of what the truth-seeking individual can accomplish.
The Appointment, by Katharina Volckmer (Avid Reader). In this transgressive, darkly funny novel, a German woman living in London launches into an incendiary monologue during a gynecological examination. Beginning with a dream of Hitler, she touches on subjects such as the efficacy of sex robots, German complacency, the sham of heterosexual love, and the deficiencies of the therapist she was required to see after threatening to attack someone with a stapler at a previous job. As her rant gathers steam, she recounts her failed relationship with a painter named K. and her struggles with her sense of identity. The novel gleefully rushes into excruciating territory, asserting that “the only true comfort we can find in life is to be free from our own lies.”
His Only Wife, by Peace Adzo Medie (Algonquin). “Elikem married me in absentia,” Afi, a young Ghanaian woman of humble origins, explains at the start of this engaging début novel. The wedding has been arranged by the groom’s exceedingly wealthy family, who hope to end his relationship with another woman, of whom they disapprove. “You have to learn to fight for your husband,” Afi’s new mother-in-law instructs. Things begin to seem like a fairy tale when Eli turns out to be handsome and kind, and even encourages Afi’s career in fashion design. Still, he will not give up the other woman. Afi is no class warrior—“Only rich people could afford the types of clothes I wanted to make,” she says—but she gradually develops into a woman able to demand what she wants.
