Lit Hub Daily: March 27, 2023

TODAY: In 1891, Hungarian novelist and playwright Lajos Zilahy is born.

• David Keenan on the Bible, the ultimate book of books. | Lit Hub Criticism

• Joelle Kid on the subversive heroine of Howl’s Moving Castle and what it means to write a book for kids—instead of about them. | Lit Hub Criticism

• “What I’ve come to understand is the untethering never really happens, and the in-between state is sublime bliss and unimaginable pain.” Jasmin Attia remembers Egypt through grape leaves. | Lit Hub Food

• The role of Big Data in sorting humanity across history: “Lots of data about lots of people allows scientists, marketers, militaries, spies to better know you— and target you.” | Lit Hub Tech

• Ibram X. Kendi considers the crisis of the intellectuals: “The traditional construct of the intellectual has produced and reinforced bigoted ideas of group hierarchy—the most anti-intellectual constructs existing.” | The Atlantic

• Publishers are preparing for a showdown with Silicon Valley over ChatGPT and other AI tools. | The Wall Street Journal

• “Grab your pen, comrade, the German socialist national culture needs you!” On East German writer Brigitte Reimann’s 1963 novel Siblings. | The New Yorker

• Why feminist retellings are having a (big) moment. | The Guardian

• Dozens of Israeli writers and poets are going to read from “The Book of Lamentations” in protest of Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms. | The Times of Israel

• And now Agatha Christie is getting a contemporary rewrite. | The Independent

Also on Lit Hub: A reading list of diary-themed fiction • Liam Callanan on starting over • Read a story from Yuri Herrera’s newly translated collection, Ten Planets (tr. Lisa Dillman)

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