Five top books of criticism

John Freeman is an award-winning writer and book critic. The former editor of Granta and onetime president of the National Book Critics Circle, he has written about books for more than two hundred publications worldwide, including The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, La Repubblica, and La Vanguardia. His first book, The Tyranny of E-mail, was published in 2009. His poetry has been published in The New Yorker, ZYZZYVA, and The Paris Review. His new book is How to Read a Novelist.

For The Daily Beast, Freeman named his favorite books of criticism. One title on the list:

Create Dangerously by Edwidge Danticat.

The best critics excavate in order to rescue. In this moving collection of essays, Edwidge Danticat reminds how the emigrant writer must first do that to their own voice, for reasons she enumerates in pieces that alternate between meditations on Albert Camus, Haiti’s blood-soaked slave uprising, and her own family’s shattered history. Danticat’s voice is warm, yet steely, as if every word of this fiercely written book was dug out of the dirt by her own hands.

Read about another book on Freeman's list.

--Marshal Zeringue