PRICE $8.99 APRIL 13, 2020 GREAT NEW PAPERBACKS FOR SPRING ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR “A page-turning mystery.... NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST READING Lalami may be our finest “Superb.... Brilliant.... contemporary chronicler of Phillips’s deep examination immigration and its discontents.” of loss and longing...is a —The Washington Post testament to the novel’s power.” —The New York Times Book Review WINNER OF THE ORANGE PRIZE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GRATITUDE AND ON THE MOVE CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST THE CIRCLE AND THE MONK OF MOKHA “Life bursts through all of Oliver “Ingenious.... Adichie has created Sacks’s writing. He was and will an extraordinary book.” “Striking.... remain a brilliant singularity.” —Los Angeles Times Contains such ferocity.” —The New York Times Book Review —The New York Times Book Review ALSO AVAILABLE IN EBOOK VINTAGE READ EXCERPTS AT VINTAGEANCHOR.COM ANCHOR APRIL 13, 2020 4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 11 THE TALK OF THE TOWN David Remnick on New York’s empty streets; a view from the E.R.; the Navy’s ship comes in; the death of a father; the front line of the grocery. Not all our DEPT. OF SCIENCE Matthew Hutson 16 Attack Mode award-winning The search for the solution to the next virus. writing can SHOWCASE Moises Saman 19 Curfew begins in Amman, Jordan. be found LETTER FROM LOS ANGELES Geoff Dyer 23 Home Alone Together in these pages. Solidarity in the new domesticity. ANNALS OF GASTRONOMY Bill Buford 26 Good Bread Mastering the art of French baking. 34 DISPATCHES FROM A PANDEMIC Twelve writers on life in the time of COVID-19. A REPORTER AT LARGE Ariel Levy 50 The Mission Was a “white savior” in Uganda falsely accused? FICTION Tessa Hadley 62 “The Other One” THE CRITICS The New Yorker Today app THE ART WORLD is the best way to stay on top of 70 Peter Schjeldahl The Old Masters and our transience. news and culture every day, as BOOKS well as the magazine each week. Casey Cep 73 The radical faith of Dorothy Day. Get a daily blend of reporting, 77 Briefly Noted commentary, humor, and cartoons Dan Chiasson 78 Joyelle McSweeney’s “Toxicon and Arachne.” from the Web site, and browse ON TELEVISION magazine issues back to 2008. Doreen St. Félix 80 “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.” newyorker.com/go/today POEMS Deborah Garrison 20 “After Sex, Checking for Instagram Posts by My Kids, and Other Avoidance Strategies” Arthur Sze 67 “Transpirations” COVER Pascal Campion “Lifeline” DRAWINGS Barbara Smaller, Roz Chast, Mike Twohy, Available on iPad and iPhone Bruce Eric Kaplan, Tom Toro, P. C. Vey, Liana Finck, Ellis Rosen, Zachary Kanin, Frank Cotham, Brooke Bourgeois SPOTS Anthony Russo THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 13, 2020 1 jixiansheng The Sunday Archive Newsletter CONTRIBUTORS Ariel Levy (“The Mission,” p. 90) is a staff Matthew Hutson (“Attack Mode,” p. 16), writer. Her most recent book is the mem- a science writer living in New York oir “The Rules Do Not Apply.” City, is the author of “The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking.” Bill Buford (“Good Bread,” p. 26), a for- Dig into mer fiction editor at The New Yorker, Karen Russell (“Dispatches from a Pan- is the author of “Among the Thugs” demic,” p. 34) has written four books, in- stories from and “Heat.” His latest book, “Dirt,” will cluding the short-story collection “Orange be published in May. World” and the novel “Swamplandia!” our 95-year Edwidge Danticat (“Dispatches from a Pascal Campion (Cover), an illustrator, Pandemic,” p. 41) is the author of, most is an art director for animation studios archive. recently, “Everything Inside.” in Southern California. Moises Saman (Showcase, p. 19), a doc- Maggie Nelson (“Dispatches from a Pan- umentary photographer, won a Gug- demic,” p. 38) was named a MacArthur genheim Fellowship in 2015. His book Fellow in 2016. Her book “The Argo- “Discordia” is a visual account of the nauts” won the 2016 National Book Arab Spring. Critics Circle Award. Tessa Hadley (Fiction, p. 62) has con- Arthur Sze (Poem, p. 67) is the author tributed short stories to the magazine of, most recently, the collection “Sight since 2002. Her most recent novel is Lines,” which won the 2019 National “Late in the Day.” Book Award for Poetry. Gary Shteyngart (“Dispatches from a Lorrie Moore (“Dispatches from a Pan- Pandemic,” p. 37) is the author of five demic,” p. 39) has published ten books, books, including “Little Failure” and including “Bark” and “See What Can “Lake Success.” Be Done.” THIS WEEK ON NEWYORKER.COM Classic New Yorker pieces, delivered to your in-box every weekend with the Sunday Archive newsletter. Sign up at newyorker.com/ sundaynewsletter PERSONAL HISTORY POSTSCRIPT C Pam Zhang reflects on her Jonathan Blitzer on the life of Juan father’s death and her immigrant Sanabria, one of New York City’s first parents’ psychological legacy. coronavirus victims. Download the New Yorker Today app for the latest news, commentary, criticism, and humor, plus this week’s magazine and all issues back to 2008. CRUZ-PEREZ WALKIRIS COURTESY LIU; RIGHT: RACHEL LEFT: 2 THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 13, 2020 On the Trail Newsletter THE MAIL A SWIM IN THE SEA “deaths of despair,” as the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton call Jill Lepore, in her chronicle of plague lit- them—overlooks a historical develop- erature, reads Albert Camus’s 1947 novel, ment that supports his thesis (Books, “The Plague,” as a parable (“Don’t Come March 23rd). Gawande points out that Any Closer,” March 30th). The virus is death rates across the world have been Fascism, and the inevitable return of falling for decades. This is generally Sign up for the disease is evidence of the failure of true, but, after the collapse of Com- human sympathy. “Men will always be- munism, in 1989, death rates in Russia The New Yorker’s come, again, rats,” Lepore writes. But and much of the former Soviet Union when I read “The Plague” with my ninth- increased dramatically. While alcohol and tenth-grade students in the fall of consumption played a key role in this 2020 election 2017, we found that Camus’s text offered surge, the underlying cause, as Case not just the darkness that Lepore cites but and Deaton suggest, was social disin- newsletter also a complex vision of resistance to it. tegration. Throughout Russia, indus- My students, in their essays, all wanted trial employment collapsed, just as it to analyze the same scene: a moment in has in the American Rust Belt. Income which Bernard Rieux, a doctor and the inequality soared, with vulture capi- book’s narrator, escapes from the plague- talists snatching state resources and ridden town with his partner in resis- becoming billionaires. Without the tance, Jean Tarrou. They go for a swim centralized command economy, many in the sea. Their strokes synch up, and social and health services could no lon- they find themselves in physical and ger run. Non-state organizations that mental sympathy with each other, “per- might have offered some social stabil- fectly at one.” Afterward, they must re- ity had been barred by the Soviet Union, turn to their plague-stricken patients. and religion provided solace for only a My students were attracted to this scene portion of the population. For many not only because it is a lyrical respite Russian workers, the future was bleak, from the horrors of the text but because and deaths from violence, alcohol, and Subscribe to On the Trail it offers the possibility of respite as a heart disease escalated. to receive weekly insights, form of resistance. In short, we saw in Russia twenty analysis, and observations The physical leap that Rieux and Tar- years ago what we see in America from our writers rou take into the sea is made possible by today—deteriorating economic condi- an imaginative one: they free their minds, tions, ineffective social supports, and a covering the campaign. if only for a moment, from the grip of health-care system that cannot effec- the plague. Lepore cites Rieux’s asser- tively address self-destructive behavior Sign up at tion that “no one will ever be free so long or chronic disease. We know what has newyorker.com/onthetrail as there are pestilences.” But he and Tar- happened to Russian politics since the rou do not naïvely assume themselves to nineteen-nineties. The conditions in be free; they carve a form of freedom out the U.S. that Gawande describes have of a landscape inimical to it. To resist the led to our own flirtation with a leader psychological effects of COVID-19, we who ignores the truth and manipulates need to find a form of imaginative free- the media. I hope that our country will dom that, like Rieux and Tarrou’s, does not follow the path trod by Russia after not ignore the pestilence. Camus calls its decade of deaths from despair. this “a happiness that forgot nothing.” Frank Feeley Kyra G. Morris Concord, Mass. 1Princeton, N.J. • LESSONS FROM RUSSIA Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited Atul Gawande, in his excellent article for length and clarity, and may be published in about the rise in death rates among any medium. We regret that owing to the volume less educated working-class whites— of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter. THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 13, 2020 3 In an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, New York City museums, galleries, theatres, music venues, cinemas, and restaurants have closed.