The New Yorker January 31, 2022

Joshua Rothman (“Best-Case Scenario,” p. 30), who joined the magazine in 2012, is the ideas editor of newyorker.com. Ayşegül Savaş (Fiction, p. 50) is the author of the novels “Walking on the Ceiling” and “White on White.” Akhil Sharma (“Imagining Ziggy,” p. 24) has published the novel “Family Life” and the short-story collection “A Life of Adventure and Delight.” A new edition of his début novel, “An Obedient Father,” will come out in July. Ivy Knight (The Talk of the Town, p. 15), a writer and a producer, is at work on “All Day,” a documentary film about restaurants in Toronto. Terrance Hayes (Poem, p. 46), a former MacArthur Fellow, is the author of “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin” and “To Float in the Space Between.” Weike Wang (Shouts & Murmurs, p.…

WORDPLAY Anna Shechtman’s essay about her intertwined experiences of crossword-puzzle construction and anorexia presents a candid look at eating disorders (“Black-and-White Thinking,” December 27th). As someone who has struggled with anorexia, I, too, believe that my disorder was primarily a curse of dualistic thinking, coupled with perfectionism, rigidity, and a desire to craft a certain identity. Yet I hadn’t considered the connection between my disorder and my love of crosswords. I enjoy solving puzzles during meals, perhaps as a way of taking the focus away from what I’m eating. In the presence of a grid—and a seemingly impossible clue—any invasive thoughts quiet down. Maybe crosswords are both an extension of my eating disorder and part of my becoming free of it. I’m grateful to Shechtman for offering a sense of camaraderie,…

JANUARY 26 – FEBRUARY 1, 2022 In 1950, the American poet Gwendolyn Brooks became the first Black recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, in any category, for her second collection, “Annie Allen.” Twenty years later, she donated the proceeds from “Riot”—poems about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.—to its publisher, the Black-owned Broadside Press. Both books are among a variety of first editions, broadsides, and manuscripts on view in “Gwendolyn Brooks: A Poet’s Work in the Community,” opening at the Morgan Library on Jan. 28. As ever, it’s advisable to confirm engagements in advance and to check the requirements for in-person attendance. MUSIC Earl Sweatshirt: “Sick!” HIP-HOP In recent years, the rapper Thebe Kgositsile, who performs as Earl Sweatshirt, has tried to reassess the music of his youth in an attempt to reincarnate himself. An…

Landscapers This HBO miniseries is based on the true story of Susan and Chris Edwards, an English couple who, in 2013, were arrested for murdering Susan’s parents—and burying the bodies in their back yard—fifteen years earlier. The show’s co-creators, Will Sharpe, who directed, and Ed Sinclair, who wrote the script, fully integrate the breaking of the fourth wall into their haunting study of marriage, victimhood, and role-play. Since the killings, Susan (Olivia Colman) and Chris (David Thewlis) have been living in France, where fugitive life is uneventful. Susan, a cinephile, blows through ludicrous amounts of money on rare movie posters and film memorabilia, while Chris tries and fails to find a job to support her life style. Their outlaw existence is endearingly simple, a trifle boring—they are not so much on…

At most sushi restaurants, when you’re enjoying an omakase meal for which you’re soon going to pay a large sum of money, you don’t expect to hear phrases like “striped bass from a hydroponic farm in Bushwick,” “sake brewed in Industry City,” or “soy sauce made by a guy named Bob in Mystic, Connecticut.” And yet that’s exactly what you may hear at Jeff Miller’s East Village spot, Rosella—the only sustainable sushi restaurant in New York City. Miller, who grew up in California, is a pioneer: from 2017 to 2019, he was the chef at the first sustainable sushi restaurant in New York City, Mayanoki, now closed. At Rosella, he continues his practice of purposefully avoiding overfished species, a factor that constantly shifts in relation to fishery management, following the recommendations…

Vladimir Putin presents himself to his citizens and to the world as the standard-bearer of a modern counter-enlightenment. He has declared liberal democracy “obsolete,” a political arrangement that has “outlived its purpose.” One of his historical role models is said to be Alexander III, a reactionary tsar in the Romanov dynasty who instituted draconian restrictions on the press, sought to “Russify” his multi-ethnic empire, and mobilized against internal and external threats. Four years ago, Putin expressed his deep admiration for the tsar while visiting the Crimean Peninsula, a substantial and distinctly unthreatening parcel of Ukraine that Russia invaded in 2014 and has occupied ever since. Once more, Putin is poised to invade Ukraine. His weapons include military hardware, malware, and propaganda. The last time he invaded, he did so with utmost…