The Books Briefing: 5 Short Stories to Read This Weekend

I often think of fiction as fact’s partner in the pursuit of truth. At its best, the genre is capable of rendering the worlds we’re unable to imagine, and also of revealing the ones hidden around us. Last year, The Atlantic recommitted itself to publishing fiction with greater frequency. Short stories continue to thrive alongside our important journalistic efforts, and we have begun 2021 intent on pushing the diversity of our pieces—not only regarding race, politics, and gender, but also in terms of style, perspective, and form.

In October, Nicole Krauss’s “To Be a Man” ruminated on masculinity and aggression from the perspective of a mother whose two boys are approaching adulthood. In November, we ran an unpublished story by the Gilded Age skewerer (and Atlantic Monthly contributor) Edith Wharton, which displayed her quintessentially American snark and sharp wit. Te-Ping Chen’s story “Shanghai Murmur” closed out the year in December with a tale of a girl who leaves China’s provinces for the metropolis of Shanghai. There she confronts the strictures of class and the limitations of desire.

In January, we shared two extraordinary pieces by two distinct new voices: “Discovery,” by Lauren Oyler, a writer known for her acerbic literary criticism, and “Early Retirement,” by the polymathic and uncompromising Brontez Purnell. Coincidentally, both stories, in all their myriad differences, contain very funny scenes of skin-care routines.

​Every Friday in the Books Briefing, we thread together Atlantic stories on books that share similar ideas.

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What We’re Reading

“To Be a Man,” by Nicole Krauss