A compendium of terrific essayist portfolio examples from renowned essayists talking above a diverse range of subjects!

Essayist Portfolio Examples

Thanks to The Scholar Wife (Natasha Gural) The Middlebrow and The Renaissance Son were allowed entry to The European Fine Arts Fair (better known as TEFAF) for two invitation-only days of previews of wares by dealers of arts, antiquities, jewelry and…

The Middlebrow Abroad

The New Yorker just published an excellent long-form investigation by Nathan Heller headlined “The End of the English Major” that examines literature’s fall from academic grace in undergraduate education. Enrollment is down, budgets have been…

The Nature and Purpose of the University*

Once upon a time, back in my journalism career, I recall having an article I’d written positively cited by a United States government agency devoted to clear speech, without jargon. I remember this now because of a LinkedIn post that crossed my feed:…

On "Dumbing Down"

Already, the United States Treasury is having to shift money around its account at the U.S. Federal Reserve to keep government salaries, benefits payments, contractor fees and bond coupons flowing. Sometime in the summer, though nobody know precisely…

The Debt Ceiling and Morality Tales of Debt

The year was 2032, precisely ten years after ChatGPT went online. In the span of a decade, a single language model with full access to the entire human internet had finally read everything—particularly 4chan, the comments section of YouTube, and your…

I Asked ChatGPT to Send a Terminator Back in Time to Circumvent Its Own Inception

After winning her 32nd Grammy for best dance/electronic album at the Recording Academy award show this week, Beyonce became the biggest Grammy collector in history, with her zoo of gramophone statues finally rivaling that of conductor Georg Solti,…

And the Award for Best Award Show

Through March, the Irish Repertory Theatre in Chelsea is showing Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Endgame, with a 72-year-old Bill Irwin playing the role of Clov, the abused manservant of Ham, who owns the house they are all trapped in at the end of the…

The Endgame of Endgame

Over at New Pop Lit, editor and provocateur Karl Wenclas asks about artificial intelligence: “What are the real pros and cons of A.I. technology applied to writing and literature? What’s the best strategy to follow: to embrace the technology, or find…

The Challenge of ChatGPT

At the start of the week, The Middlebrow reviewed Bret Easton Ellis’ latest novel, The Shards for The Washington Independent Review of Books. LitHub accurately characterized the review as a “rave,” and why not desecrate the first long fiction from…

The Literary Brat-Packaverse

A teenage Ellis contends with a serial killer in this autofictional memoir. In 2013, Bret Easton Ellis tweeted a logline: “New Novel: Robert Mallory is a high school student and serial killer in 1981 Los Angeles.” In the interim, he collaborated with…

The Shards: A Novel

Try to imagine a more carny story than this: A boy grows up poor in the rural south, abandoned by his real family and abused by his adoptive one. He finds his real father, who runs a traveling circus and makes a modest fortune. The boy and his father…

What If? Saudi Arabia Bought WWE?

Happy 2023! The Middlebrow won’t link to the already forgotten kerfuffle, but somebody on Twitter posted a personal reading list that drew scorn from hedge fund manager and “black swan” guru Nassim Nicholas Taleb that led to a brief shark frenzy…

Happy 2023, Let's Read!

Kelly Conlon, an associate at law firm Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, chaperoned her 9-year-old daughter and Girl Scout troop to The Rockettes for a holiday experience older than watching Die Hard or A Christmas Story on loop. The girls were…

Social Credit at MSG and The #ArtByHumans

I don’t ever post reviews on Amazon, but since I had Elon Musk’s Neuralink Ultra High Bandwidth Brain Machine implanted in my frontal lobe, I’ve felt uncontrollably compelled to share this five-star rating. My genius brain won’t stop thinking about…

My Review of the Neuralink Brain Enhancement Device

Some of Tom Stoppard I have only read, some I have only seen on film, and some I have only seen live. I wish I’d seen Coast of Utopia in marathon, though the three plays do read almost like a novel. I’ve only seen the excellent film version of…

Leopoldstadt: A New Masterpiece from the Master

When you approach Gill and Jill Bumby, you have no idea who you’re dealing with. The performance art duo are masked, with sunglasses, headphones and bandanas, hiding their true identities, in the tradition of Mexican luchadores. When you approach The…

Restarted by the Bumbys

This week, a pair of ad campaigns from fashion house Balenciaga attracted criticism from The New York Post and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, creating an online mobbing that branded the luxury clothes and accessory maker pedophilia-adjacent. The New York…

Balenciaga Should Not Have Backed Down

Any of us who buy tickets to shows and events knows that Ticketmaster shows up, time and time again, when we go to purchase. The ticketing service has exclusive deals with major, middle and minor venues around the world, and has huge influence over…

Ticketmaster Sucks, Happy Black Friday

Elon Musk may kill Twitter, or Twitter might die on its own. The death of social networks is rarely dramatic or cataclysmic, though. They fade, rather than explode and the koan becomes, if no one is around to doom scroll, does the feed still make…

Not With A Bang But a Twitter

A friend proposed we write a mystery together — actually, a series and we’re now batting ideas around. As part of our brainstorm, we agreed to loan each other mysteries from our shelves. The Middlebrow quickly noticed how bare his shelves were of…

The Mystery of Mysteries

This is a collection that contains all your pieces.

Essays, opinions and reviews about culture, arts, politics, finance and economy

In 2008, NYC parent Lenore Skenazy wrote a column for the New York Sun in which she provocatively revealed that she'd allowed her 9-year-old son Izzy to make his way home from Bloomingdale's in Manhattan to the family's home, an hour away by subway…

My Son Died, But I Have No Regrets About His Free-Range Childhood

Our nation is in the midst of a public health emergency the likes of which we have not seen since the first decade of AIDS’ spread across America. And much like the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the victims of the current crisis are both vilified…

The Greatest Threat Since AIDS

I am a progressive Democrat, a description that will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me even a little bit. However, even as this is the case, I have always shown nonpartisan respect to each of the U.S. presidents who have served in my adult…

I am a progressive Democrat

The little girl is 10 years old; she’ll be 11 on the last day of this month. As I write this, she’s nearby, tapping away on her own little Chromebook, the one that Santa brought her last year. She has her tiny laptop perched on the countertop of her…

Little Girl, Interrupted

I’ve been a blogger for about 10 years, and like many bloggers, for the first few years that I published online, I began by using Google’s Blogger platform. However, as blogging became more popular, I started noticing that many other writers’ blogs…

Why I’m Switching From Wordpress to Medium

Previously I wrote a blog post sharing some of the things I would do differently if I had the chance to raise my sweet son Henry all over again. Unfortunately, I don’t get that chance but perhaps some of you reading what I have to say will find some…

Parenting An Addicted Teen: If I Could Turn Back Time, Part 2

My son Henry was born a musician. In fact, even before he was born, I could feel him move and react in my belly when I played certain tunes; at the time, I carefully noted in his baby book that his in utero preferences leaned to Public Enemy, Big…

Henry, Wilco and The Whole Love

Many if not most of you know that I lost my oldest son Henry, age 18 to a drug overdose and brutal drug-related beating. Even though years have now passed, I still hurt just as much as I did in the beginning. I cry almost every day. I feel broken in…

Parenting An Addicted Teen: What I Wish I’d Known, Part 1

After Losing A Child: Henry’s Body Was More Than “Just A Shell”
Last night Jon had to wake me up from a horrible nightmare. I was apparently screaming out loud. It isn’t the first time I’ve had a bad dream in recent weeks — they seem to come more…

After Losing A Child: Henry’s Body Was More Than “Just A Shell”

Since losing my oldest child to a drug overdose when he was only 18 years old, I’ve given a lot of thought to fear and risk when it comes to parenting our children. In the years before my son Henry became really sick with his drug addiction, I…

Kids & Drugs: Be More Afraid Than You Are

I’m a HUGE fan of the Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale, so much so that I actually belong to a Facebook group for Handmaid’s Tale fanatics. In the group we talk about all kinds of theories and spoilers for the show, and we also post real-world…

Imagine Being Forced To Remain Married

I began to suspect that something was very wrong the day I could no longer walk across the library at the law school where I was a first year student. Ten weeks pregnant, I had been fighting excessive fatigue, loss of appetite and night sweats for…

When “Pro Choice” Gets Real

Early this morning, right after our family had just woken up for the day, the children, Jon and I were hanging out in my bedroom, sitting on the bed, and talking about how weird it was that Jon had seen a baby possum behind the dryer a few days…

Today: A Deluge of Possums

Responsible Parenting vs. Overparenting
I just finished reading an essay about why one mother never uses a baby monitor, in which she writes:
I developed a habit of lolling around bed in the morning, not responding to my daughter’s cries down the…

Responsible Parenting vs. Overparenting

When talking about the thousands of immigrant children from Central and South America currently detained and separated from their parents by the U.S. government, I’ve heard many people say that this situation is no different from those in which an…

No Due Process for Detained Immigrant Kids

The Case for Charging Dealers in OD Deaths
I strongly support harm reduction strategies for fighting the opiate epidemic, including the use of drug courts and diversion programs, recovery high schools, sober living communities, mass access to…

The Case for Charging Dealers in OD Deaths

In an exclusive interview, Erin McLean tells her side of a tragic story
News@Knoxnews.Com
Katie Allison Granju's 'Because I said so' blog
Like everyone else in Knoxville, I was shocked by the crime.
The March 10, 2007, shooting death of teenager Sean…

Erin McLean: 'It was a huge mistake'

Save money on your kitchen remodel by refacing your cabinets instead of replacing them. Use these tips to make sure your current cabinets are up to snuff first.
Keep in mind: Price and stock could change after publish date, and we may make money from…

Kitchen Cabinets: Should You Replace or Reface?

Our nation is in the midst of a public health emergency the likes of which we have not seen since the first decade of AIDS' spread across America. And much like the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the victims of the current crisis are both vilified…

Death By Prescription Drugs: How Dare You Say My Son "Deserved" It

You could call Elisabeth Badinter a very lucky woman. It's not just that she's wealthy, successful, a respected scholar and a best-selling writer in her home country, France (yep, she gets to live in Paris, too.)
It's also that Badinter, who…

Are we ready for a cease-fire in the Mommy Wars?

A subset of Pentecostals is preparing for a spiritual battle over American elections that could turn into actual violence I took my first stroll around the Capitol Building on January 3, 2021, the day after I moved into the neighborhood. The air was…

Pentecostals’ Political Warfare

I remember singing a children’s worship song in my Pentecostal church when I was around 10 years old: It’s time to cross over. It’s time to possess the land. We’ll stand, lifting up Your praises. Through this mighty army, we’ll bring revival to the…

Spiritual Warfare on the Feast of the Epiphany

“Join us for Christmas Eve!” read the homepage for the District Church in Washington, DC, as the congregation planned to gather for the holiday for the first time since 2019. Read This Issue More Newsletters The District Church, a multiethnic,…

The Alpha and the Omicron: COVID-19 Disrupts Christmas Worship Again

Revs. William Barber II and Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, held a press conference and protest in the front of the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 14 to pressure Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to meet…

Poor People’s Campaign Protests Manchin’s ‘Sinful’ Policy Positions

In October, Pat Robertson, at the age of 91, announced he was retiring as the long-reigning host of The 700 Club after 54 years on the air. He told viewers on the 60th anniversary of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), which Robertson founded…

How Pat Robertson Changed Television and American Politics

The latest Supreme Court case over public funding for religious schooling examines a policy in Maine, a state dotted with small towns too tiny to run their own public schools. Over half of the state’s school districts (officially called “school…

Can Maine Cover the Cost of Christian School Tuition?

Over the last year and a half, mutual aid’s increased popularity has helped people connect with neighbors, build relationships, and attempt to combat racism and economic inequality. Now, mutual aid structures are being tested by hurricanes, fires,…

What Can Mutual Aid Do In a Disaster?

Commentators have already been comparing the Biden administration’s expansive legislative agenda to the New Deal ambitions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The mixture of a global pandemic, racial protests, and national political turmoil have ignited a…

Faith and the Fight for a $15 Minimum Wage

The past several weeks on Capitol Hill have shown minor fissures between the Biden administration and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Way past the honeymoon phase for President Joseph R. Biden, the progressive wing of the DNC has p

Progressives Lose on the $15 Minimum-Wage (And Why They Did)

THE PASSION CENTER is a Christian community in Pembroke Pines, Fla., about 20 miles north of Miami. The organization is affiliated with the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination, but it neither emphasizes its denominational ties nor resembles…

The Politics of Pentecostalism

Across the globe, an estimated 40.3 million people are trapped in modern slavery, and roughly a quarter of them are children. In the United States, of the nearly 26,300 runaways reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 1 in 6…

Christian QAnon'ers Want to #SaveTheChildren. They're Making Things Worse

In the wake of the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, a remarkable number of white people have joined the #BlackLivesMatter movement – even some evangelical Christian celebrities not known for making overt political…

This Isn't the First Time Christians Have Opposed A Racial Justice Movement

The coronavirus pandemic, regardless of the outcome for our society in the weeks (or months) ahead, will undoubtedly be marked as one of the pivotal times in American consciousness, much akin to the 2008 financial meltdown or the 9/11 terrorist…

Dangerous Theology: Dissecting the Faith Arguments Against Social Distancing

The Onion summed it up best: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.” So many daunting challenges face President Obama that it’s hard to know on which to offer him my unsolicited advice first. It’s a crapshoot as to whether any president could heal our…

Class Is the New Black

Asian-Pacific chick drawing my blood at the VA just now. Another white, female tech leaning against the wall, exhausted. Double shift written all over her. The two women chat the chat of a rested woman trying to help a bone tired one manage til…

What Happens When You Witness Sexual Harassment at Your Doctor’s Office

Must be Friday, because someone has just noticed, again, that our family court system is a soul-crushing, pocket-emptying, child-destroying disgrace. A piece on the Huffington Post alerted me that yet another high-powered group, of mostly lawyers,…

Believe Family Court Reform When You See It

New York City has announced a massive initiative to connect the “thousands of young black and Latino men [who] are cut off from New York’s civic, educational and economic life, [and] plans to spend nearly $130 million on far-reaching measures to…

Poor Women of Color Played to the Left Again

Marjorie, I agree that it’s time to let the McClelland firestorm die out, although it, like all bare-knuckle debate, has been good for both journalists and readers. More so for journalists, since we’re the ones who, more or less, decide what to write…

Can a Barricade-Manning Liberal Ever Win the Benefit of the Doubt?

It didn’t take one of Jack Shafer’s devastating media criticism pieces for me to smell an immediate rat with Newsweek’s splashy feature, John Next Door. From the start, it had “barely hidden agenda” and “desperate for mass readership” written all…

If You Want To Outlaw Prostitution, You’re Going To Have To Do Better Than This

Reading about scholar Lori Ginzburg’s new biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton is mildly annoying. Can it still be the case that enough effete, overeducated, bleeding heart NPR listeners remain unaware of the rampant class- and racism among both…

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Abolitionist, Founding Feminist and (yawn) Hypocrite

Marjorie, Haitians' suffering won't be worsened in any way by Mac McClelland’s excellent essay about her desire for violent sex after reporting from there. It's brave. It's free. It knowingly courts disaster. None of the rhetorical "mom jeans" (e.g.,…

Mac McClelland's Essay About Rough Sex Is Fearless, Not Offensive

Growing up in the inner city, it seemed that every neighborhood joked about a local – always male – who was amiably alcoholic, never worked for long, and was more or less happily homeless, having both worn out his welcome with relatives and having…

The Return of Bubba

Never let it be said that I can’t find the racial angle to everything; today it’s store mannequins.
According to the NYT : “With retailers fighting for customers in the sluggish economic recovery, the generic white, hairless, skinny mannequin is…

Dummies in the Hood

You know, there’s just no sport in responding to a provocation so inexpertly misogynist, racist, juvenile, and attention-seeking as this one . Slave masters and harem keepers will be rising from their graves to protest the insult to their…

Right-Wing Bigots Phone It In

It’s hard to know what to make of Quentin Tarantino’s newly announced movie , Django Unchained , but, for now, I’ll go with grudging gratitude. And pessimism.
In the movie, “Django is a freed slave, who, under the tutelage of a German bounty hunter…

Tarantino Takes on Slavery

Bad stuff needs to stop happening to me on major holidays.
It was at least a decade before Christmas stopped being the commemoration of “The Day I Was Raped by a Fellow Soldier and the Military Punished Me ” and went back to being just good old…

On This Mother’s Day, I Am a Mother No More

In California, deadbeat parents owe $19.2 billion in unpaid child support . In this economy, many states face similar realities; the situation’s grim enough that, even as we speak, the Supreme Court is deciding whether such parents have a right to…

If “Deadbeat” Parents Aren’t Punished, Should They Be Allowed To Fight for Custody and Visitation?

Hey, batterers: Do me a favor. Move to New York City. There are five boroughs, it’s a big place. So just move ANYWHERE in New York City. Please .
Since last year all prisoner calls there, save for those to physicians or their attorneys, have been…

Keep Talking Stupid.

Gerry Garibaldi, a “former executive and Hollywood screenwriter” who now teaches at an urban high school, is an excellent example of someone capable of caring about his beleaguered charges while utterly misunderstanding why they do the things they…

No Pregnant Teen Left Unblamed

Kelley Williams-Bolar has been found guilty of two third-degree felonies in Ohio for falsifying residency documents to send her girls to school in her father’s suburban school district rather than her own poorer one. The afrosphere is livid. Noted…

Trying To Be a Good Mom? Off With Your Head!

Amanda, I have to disagree with your opposition to Naomi Wolf’s argument that rape claimants should identify themselves in order to prosecute. I’m with Wolf: Women-anyone-who files rape charges should put their name, and face, on the accusation.
My…

The Blue Dots of Shame Should be for Rapists not Rape Victims

Ever notice how certain stories, based on phenomena you never thought much about before, seem to start popping up in your intellectual peripheral vision week after week until you finally have to frontal-lobe the damn things? Well, I finally reached a…

Bound and Gagged By Their Pasts

For more illumination of the epidemic of rape in South Africa that Intern Anna began this week, here’s a sobering PSA that brings home the point and, most importantly, universalizes it.
It’s easy to heave a sigh of relief about the staggering…

If a Woman Gets Killed in a Forest …

We all think we know Theodore Parker, the fearless Boston preacher who wrote sermons with a pistol on his desk to protect runaway slaves; the theological radical who discarded every "transient" doctrine and embraced only the "permanent"; the bold…

Theodore Parker, heretical prophet

December 15, 2034
Dear Sierra,
Thanks for the phone call, sweetie; your dad gave me a heads-up about your Coming of Age assignment. It’s a good question you asked—how being Unitarian Universalist is different now than it was for your dad or your…

Letter from a hoped-for future

Get Down
When I was growing up in Chicago, there was no rowdier time in our house than Friday night, when my mother, my three siblings and I stayed up to watch “Red Hot and Blues” on Channel 26, Chicago’s first UHF station. Part advertisement and…

Get Down

Eve Ensler is an activist, playwright and author with a reputation as a fearless champion of women — attesting to their pain and their joys, but most of all celebrating their stories. Ensler’s signature play, “The Vagina Monologues,” is a series of…

The Cancer Monologue

We could do so much more to renew our faith tradition for this new age. Above all, we could recall our reason for being a free religious community—to reorient ourselves toward the Holy, to be a beacon of hope and courage at a time of despair and…

The threat of fundamentalism

My sons are third-generation Unitarian Universalists. After his beautiful and moving Coming of Age ceremony at our congregation, my older son, Allen, asked me whether I would be offended if he joined another religion when he grew up. Now, as his…

We must change

Looking for a sure-fire party buzzkill? Confess to the people around you that you’re a minister. What was once a free-flowing, even outrageous conversation will come to a screeching halt, complete with apologies and a quick mental review by all…

Waiting for a great novel about UU ministry

In the hours and days after November 4, a saying made its way across the Internet that speaks cogently to the stream of history in which we now stand: “Rosa sat so that Martin could walk. Martin walked so that Obama could run. Obama ran so that our…

Watching the evidence change

For a long time I imagined that I had been lured into Unitarian Universalism through marriage to a cradle UU, but lately I find I might have been mistaken. Rather, some of the seeds of my own progressive and activist faith might very well have been…

Louisa May Alcott's Unitarian legacy

At the 2003 General Assembly in Boston, I encountered a non-UU friend who regards herself as a fellow traveler in liberal faith. Having heard conversations among delegates galvanized by the “language of reverence” debate raging among Unitarian…

Do UUs have theological common ground?

Noncreedal though Unitarian Universalists are, we tend to embrace the UUA's Seven Principles as part of our personal faith. More a compass for our choices than a statement of doctrine, the Principles set the course for our religious movement, and…

Power, religious faith, and social change

This article appeared in the November/December 2002 edition of UU World.
Several years ago, in the middle of my seminary education, my literary agent called with an intriguing proposition. Would I be willing to be considered as co-writer of Coretta…

To pray without apology

Even though Islam is this country's fastest growing religious community, few of us were curious about it before September 11. Now that our need to know is urgent, the bookstore shelves are overflowing with histories, biographies, and reportage about…

An urgent encounter with Islam

See the article in its original context from
December 11, 1994, Section 7, Page 27Buy Reprints
View on timesmachine
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an…

A Heart Aflame

See the article in its original context from
View on timesmachine
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the…

Please Mr. E-Man

See the article in its original context from
December 26, 1993, Section 7, Page 15Buy Reprints
View on timesmachine
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an…

IN SHORT: NONFICTION

See the article in its original context from
January 31, 1993, Section 6, Page 21Buy Reprints
View on timesmachine
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an…

A Black Panther's Long Journey

See the article in its original context from
November 8, 1992, Section 7, Page 56Buy Reprints
View on timesmachine
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an…

Curiouser and Curiouser

See the article in its original context from
November 8, 1992, Section 6, Page 35Buy Reprints
View on timesmachine
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an…

'So How Did I Get Here?'

See the article in its original context from
November 17, 1991, Section 6, Page 56Buy Reprints
View on timesmachine
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an…

Taking Sides Against Ourselves

For his new bookshop installation, One Grand, the editor Aaron Hicklin asked people to name the 10 books they’d take with them if they were marooned on a desert island. The next installment in the series comes from Erica Jong, the writer and feminist…

My 10 Favorite Books: Erica Jong

Ever since the 40th anniversary of my first novel, ‘Fear of Flying,’ peeped over the horizon, I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling — why certain stories stick with us and others don’t.
Let’s go back to when I was writing “Fear of Flying.” What…

Unzipped (Published 2013)

is the author of 22 books, including "Fear of Flying.''
Does progressive modern motherhood destroy women’s freedom? Is the young, ecologically savvy mother the enemy of her own advancement? Let’s first agree that there is no such thing as perfection…

We Want Perfection, but Also Need Sleep

Opinion
Opinion
Is Sex Passé?
WHAT could be more eternal than sexuality? The fog of longing, the obsession with the loved one’s voice, smell, touch. Sex is discombobulating and distracting, it makes you immune to money, politics and family. And…

Is Sex Passé?

Back in the ’90s, Daphne Merkin, one of our best critics and trend-watchers, predicted that “if the last decade of the 20th century is to produce any great literature” it will be “around the subject of death.”
This has proved true.
The literature of…

An Adventurous Woman

IN THE COMPANY
OF THE COURTESAN
By Sarah Dunant.
371 pp. Random House. $23.95.
SARAH DUNANT, the British author of "The Birth of Venus" and many other novels, is a refugee from the BBC who is fascinated by the religious and political upheaval of…