In the Cities of Killing

David Remnick on Hamas, the assaults on Gaza, and what comes after. Plus: Mike Johnson and the power of the Big Lie. View in browser | Update your preferences Saturday, October 28, 2023 Letter from Israel In the Cities of Killing The Hamas massacre, the assaults on Gaza, and what comes after. By David Remnick The Weekend Essay My Grandmother and the Canine Detective How the Austrian police procedural “Inspector Rex” bridges gaps between languages. By Naaman Zhou Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker My grandmother, who is ninety-two, has moved three times in her life. She was born in a small town in the province of Shandong, China, and, when she was twenty-three, she took a boat to Shanghai. When she was sixty-three, she moved to Sydney, Australia—where I was born—and then, when she was eighty-five, came with me and my mother to New York. There are a few similarities across these places: all three are port cities—populous, but not the capital—that grew fat off the trade of an eastern coast. Another constant in her life, at least in the past twenty or so years, has been the Austrian police-procedural television show “Inspector Rex,” which is about a crime-fighting dog. Keep reading From the News Desk The New Yorker Radio Hour Is There a Path Forward for Gaza and Israel? Two sources discuss how Israelis and Palestinians feel about the October 7th attacks, and what the future may hold for the region. With David Remnick The Political Scene Podcast Mike Johnson and the Power of the Big Lie In court, Donald Trump’s former associates renounce the fallacy of a stolen election. But, in Congress, standing by “the Big Lie” can make you Speaker. With Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos The Sporting Scene The N.F.L.’s Rear Guard Is Angry About the “Tush Push” Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts and Jason Kelce have perfected the brotherly shove, but some league observers want to put an end to it. By Louisa Thomas From the Archive The Political Scene Mike Pence’s Rickety Revival The former Vice-President has suspended his 2024 Presidential campaign. From July: Pence had hoped to pull evangelical voters back from Trump. By Antonia Hitchens Books We Recommend This Week Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction. The Upstairs Delicatessen, by Dwight Garner (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Garner, whose book reviews are a highlight of the Times culture pages, serves up a commonplace book composed of literary quotations, advice for living, recipes, and a heaping side order of memoir. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Revolutionary Spring, by Christopher Clark (Crown). This Cambridge historian’s scrupulous survey takes up the interconnected uprisings that engulfed almost all of Europe in 1848. Arguing that they represent “the only truly European revolution that there has ever been,” Clark follows these revolts’ trajectories, from heady beginnings, when parliaments were convened and new constitutions proliferated, to counter-revolutionary backlashes. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Pet, by Catherine Chidgey (Europa). In this suspenseful bildungsroman, Justine, a Catholic schoolgirl living in New Zealand in the nineteen-eighties, searches for a classroom thief, as the school’s suspicions shift from her to her best friend to a glamorous new teacher. Justine’s adolescence is colored by concerns both workaday and personal: a close female friendship, petty teen-age infighting, seizures that disrupt her recall, grief for her recently deceased mother. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Fire in the Canyon, by Daniel Gumbiner (Astra). Set in the foothills of California’s gold country, this dread-laden novel follows a family who make their living cultivating grapes for winemaking as they attempt to resume their lives in the wake of a wildfire. After an evacuation, they return to the same land, but their environment presents a cascade of fears: not just death and injury from fire but power outages, dangerous air quality, and smoke that might taint their grapes and thus take away their livelihood. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. The best books of 2023 so far What are you reading this week? Reply to let us know. Culture Dept. Fiction “Upstate” They could stay together forever, Paul and Kate, and there would still be some core that would remain untouchable to her. By Emma Cline This Week in Fiction Emma Cline on Performative Vacationing The author discusses her story from the latest issue of the magazine. By Deborah Treisman Fun & Games Dept. Daily Shouts A Student Handbook for the School from Your Nightmares The first day of the school year will be the first day you show up, which is already too late. By Kate Hakala Shouts & Murmurs “My Name Is Barbra,” Excerpted Page 649—Barbra writes that she cloned her dog Sammie because her other dogs pooped on her antique-doll collection. By Henry Alford Name Drop: Can you guess the identity of a notable person—contemporary or historical—in six clues? Play our trivia game » Thanks for reading. Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters and invite a friend to sign up. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the daily newsletter from The New Yorker. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2023. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.