Author

As movies have morphed from a vibrant public event into a product we watch on our personal screens, film criticism has also been disrupted thanks to apps like Letterboxd. Fortunately, film critic A. S. Hamrah hasn’t gotten the memo. He is an insurrectionary voice in a time of critical complacency. Hamrah, who contributes reviews to Bookforum, n+1 and the Baffler, wields his pen like a flame thrower, lambasting Hollywood’s decline in a trenchant voice spiked with barbed wit while also shining a light on great marginalized films.

Hamrah has recently published two new books: a collection of his reviews called “Algorithm of the Night,” as well as a compilation of Hollywood news items called “Last Week in End Times Cinema” that reads like a doom scroll of cultural decay. I chatted with Hamrah about Marvel, Pauline Kael and AI.

✍️ Author Chat

A. S. Hamrah is a film critic and author of the recently published books “Algorithm of the Night” and “Last Week in End Times Cinema.”

(Courtesy of A. S. Hamrah)

Both of these books really describe the end of an era for movies, what you call the end of a worldview. What do you mean by that?

I think the goal of the studios, Netflix in particular, is not just to end theatrical exhibition but to end a certain way of understanding the cinema and to just turn it into television. The merger of cinema and television is very bad for cinema.

In the past, when existential threats of film reared their head, whether it was television or videocassette recorders, there was a sense of movies having to work harder to maintain its supremacy. But if everything is film, then there is no countervailing force. It all just merges into one thing.

People who watch a lot of TV were seen as kind of not really up to life in some ways. But it was never the goal of TV to crush cinema, which is the case now. Someone like Ted Sarandos at Netflix, his whole thing is based on pretending that no one likes to go to the movies anymore, when, in fact, millions of people all over the world love going to the movies.

I feel like your criticism is not about thumbs up, thumbs down. Even when you write a negative review, it’s fun to argue against it. You are creating a dialogue with your readers.

I don’t write a negative review to stop people from seeing a film. I want them to see it and make up their own mind about it. I also really try to avoid writing anything that can be extrapolated for a movie ad. I don’t want my stuff to be taken out of context and thrown onto a movie poster.

“Algorithm of the Night” is a collection of reviews by film critic A. S. Hamrah.

(Courtesy of A. S. Hamrah)

What critics inspired you?

Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael. The writer who had the biggest influence on me is Manny Farber, for the way he thinks about things and the freedom of his writing.

“Last Week in End Times Cinema” is the most depressing book I read last year, just a desultory litany of headlines about movie reboots, the creeping influence of AI on film, and so on.

When I first started publishing these, people thought I was making them up. I started culling them with great joy and mirth, but as the year progressed, with the wildfires in LA, the whole project became much more dire. And the death of David Lynch was a real blow, I thought.

You take a dim view of AI.

It seems to be Hollywood’s goal to not have any human beings involved in filmmaking. Why pay Will Smith $20 million when you can have an AI voice? But they’ve been preparing the ground for this since the beginning of the century. It feels like the whole system of production of Marvel films is already a form of AI. They’re trying to educate audiences into liking garbage, and that is what I mean when I write about the death of a worldview.

What films did you like last year?

“The Secret Agent,” “The Mastermind,” “Bugonia.” I saw “One Battle After Another” twice. There’s plenty of good commercial films that people can see in theaters, but the media acts like they don’t exist.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

“One of the reasons I decided to focus on Orange County is that it’s not the norm — not what you think of as the Deep South. It’s Disneyland. It’s California,” author Eric Lichtblau says.

(Photos by Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times, Little Brown Company)

Costa Bevan Pappas has a chat with Eric Litchtblau about his new book “American Reich,” which explores the roots of white supremacy in Orange County. “One of the reasons I decided to focus on Orange County is that it’s not the norm — not what you think of as the Deep South,” Lichtblau tells Pappas. “It’s Disneyland. It’s California. These are people who are trying to take back America from the shores of Orange County because it’s gotten too brown in their view.”

Xialou Guo has crafted a radical remix of “Moby Dick” titled “Call Me Ishmaelle,” and Leanne Ogasawara is enchanted: “There is so much pleasure to be had in rereading old favorites — and part of the joy is meeting beloved characters, who have been updated or somehow arrive in a new form to resist old tropes and types.”

A year after the wildfires, L.A. native Jacob Soboroff has written “Firestorm,” and he sat down with Mariella Rudi to discuss the first book to be written about the calamity. “For me, it’s a much more personal book,” Soboroff says. “It’s about experiencing what I came to understand as the fire of the future. It’s about people as much as politics.”

Finally, Bethanne Patrick gives us the lowdown on January’s must-read book, while Eva Recinos gives us the five best science books of 2025.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Josh Spencer, owner of the Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles, opened a second location of the book store at 4437 Lankershim Blvd.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Ever since it opened a little over a year ago, Josh Spencer’s second edition of The Last Bookstore has grown a vibrant community of Valley-dwelling book lovers hungry for a store that sells newly published titles and a curated selection of second-hand gems. I chatted with store manager Shane Danielson about what customers are excited about right now.

What’s selling right now at the Valley store?

Right now film adaptations current and upcoming are driving a lot of our fiction sales – “Frankenstein,” Pynchon’s “Vineland” (for “One Battle After Another”), “Wuthering Heights.” Certain “brand name” authors always do well: Brandon Sanderson, Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut. But generally, our stock is so diverse that it’s hard to spot broader trends.

What kind of community has gathered around the store?

We have a growing community of literate, curious, frequently funny, often politically-engaged readers and book lovers, both young and not-so-young, who see reading and things like book groups as an act of resistance to the dominant culture. They want to turn off their screens for a while, and give themselves over to the longer narrative and deeper pleasures that a book provides.

What specific genres are popular?

Plays and books about acting sell every day – unsurprising, since we’re close to the Warner Bros. and Universal studios as well as two local theatre schools. Horror, science fiction and fantasy are perennials; and an increasing number of women, presumably disillusioned with real-world dating options, are enthusiastic consumers of “romantasy” authors like Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J. Maas. Classics also do surprisingly well: people seem to be reading an awful lot of Dostoevsky and George Orwell and Jane Austen. Which is encouraging.

We know how difficult it is in this culture to make folks care about books. Do you still find in people that desire — to read, and to explore through books? Are people still curious to learn about the world via books as opposed to ChatGPT?

Many of our customers say they treasure the physicality of a book – its heft, the tactility of the pages – as opposed to the frictionless experience of reading on a Kindle or another device. And interestingly, they all say variations on the same thing, which is that those other reading experiences just don’t stick; for whatever reason, they don’t retain much of what they’ve read afterward.

The Last Bookstore in Studio City is located in 4437 Lankershim Blvd.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

As the new year begins, novelists send characters to great heights in Tibet and Wyoming, to the great depths of the 19th century Atlantic and back in time, to early 20th century Pakistan. Meanwhile, nonfiction authors contemplate a Spanish shipwreck, a racially motivated murder, the origins of great ideas and how laughter can change our lives. Happy reading!

FICTION

Call Me Ishmaelle: A Novel
By Xiaolu Guo
Grove Press: 448 pp., $18
(Jan. 6)

Guo, whose 2017 memoir “Nine Continents” detailed her difficult road to personal and artistic freedom, pours that experience into Ishmaelle, a young woman from England’s coast who joins the crew of a whaling ship named the Nimrod. Yes, it’s a retelling of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” and yes, it’s well worth your time. By adding in new characters while adhering to the original story, the author creates something new, strange and thrilling.

The Last of Earth: A Novel
By Deepa Anappara
Random House: 252 pp., $29
(Jan. 13)

Set in 1869, when Europeans were forbidden to enter Tibet, this slow-paced yet tense novel follows the perspectives of Balram, an Indian surveyor, and Katharine, a woman of mixed English and Indian heritage, as they both attempt expeditions for different purposes. During their treks both characters meet a man named Chetak, whose eerie folkloric tales underscore the power structures they’ll each have to surmount before reaching their goals.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives: A Novel
By Daniyal Mueenuddin
Knopf: 368 pp., $29
(Jan. 13)

While most of this stunning book takes place in Pakistan, an important section leads two brothers to college at Dartmouth in the United States, a place about as far in every respect from their Rawalpindi origins as possible. Mueenuddin, whose gift for satire shines whether he’s describing society matrons or gangsters, never loses sight of his theme: How do any of us ever manage to justify our treatment of the underserved?

Crux: A Novel
By Gabriel Tallent
Riverhead: 416 pp., $30
(Jan. 20)

A “crux” refers to the toughest point in a climb; it also means a decision point, as well as a place where two things cross. For Tallent’s sophomore novel, two characters who are climbers have reached an important moment in their teenage lives. Daniel and Tamma (he’s straight, she’s queer) have been close friends for years, scrabbling all over Joshua Tree peaks, but as their home lives and individual paths diverge, their bond wavers.

Vigil: A Novel
By George Saunders
Random House: 192 pp., $28
(Jan. 27)

It seems unfair that, after his spectacular “Lincoln in the Bardo,” Saunders returns with not just another novel featuring a ghost, but with a new novel even more spectacular than the last. “Who else could you have been but exactly who you are?” says the newly incarnated Jill “Doll” Blaine, sent to comfort nefarious oil tycoon K. J. Boone in his last hours alive — a statement that in no way diminishes the political urgency of this spare, lovely book.

NONFICTION

Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy
By Chris Duffy
Doubleday: 272 pp., $29
(Jan. 6)

We’ve all heard that laughter is the best medicine; funny stuff isn’t merely diversion, but essential to our health. Author Duffy, who hosts the TED Talks podcast “How to Be a Better Human,” believes that anyone, from age 10 to age 103 (he gives examples of each), can make you laugh, help you form community and even lead you to make better decisions. One of the latter? Learn to laugh at yourself; it can signal “general intelligence and verbal creativity.”

The Legend of Wyatt Outlaw: From Reconstruction Through Black Lives Matter

By Sylvester Allen Jr. and Belle Boggs
University of North Carolina Press: 296 pp., $30
(Jan. 27)

The titular Outlaw was the first Black constable of Graham, N.C. In 1870, he was killed by lynching by members of the local Ku Klux Klan, no doubt in part due to his efforts to build coalition between members of different races and social classes. Allen, a native of Graham and a playwright who wrote a drama based on Outlaw’s legacy, and Boggs, a scholar, connect the terrorism and hatred behind this man’s murder to the present day.

How Great Ideas Happen: The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success

By George Newman
Simon & Schuster: 304 pp., $30
(Jan. 27)

So many cartoons depict great ideas using light bulbs that we’ve forgotten many of the greatest ideas come about from long deliberation and careful winnowing. Canadian professor Newman uses archaeological terms for the process: surveying, gridding, digging and sifting. Who knew that Jordan Peele rewrote “Get Out” 400 times, or that Paul Simon composed his “Graceland” album by combing through all of his previous work?

Neptune’s Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire

By Julian Sancton
Crown: 384 pp., $33
(Jan. 27)

In 1708 the San José, a treasure-laden Spanish galleon, sunk off the coast of Colombia. In 2015 a man named Roger Dooley found the galleon’s wreck and brought back artifacts proving it. Unfortunately, with little education, few bona fides and a sketchy reputation, Dooley received no credit for the discovery. Sancton tracked down Dooley — now in his 80s and somewhat reclusive — and thus is able to provide a fascinating conclusion to the tale.

Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Meaning and Purpose

By Jennifer Breheny Wallace
Portfolio: 288 pp., $30
(Jan. 27)

Loneliness pervades our society and to heal it, people need to feel that they actually matter to others — something author Wallace saw when she researched and wrote her 2023 bestseller “Never Enough,” which focused on adolescents and burnout. Now Wallace shares her findings from talking with people of all ages and hearing what a difference it makes when connections are made and individuals are recognized for even the smallest contributions.

Patrick is a freelance critic and author of the memoir “Life B.”

The author of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire declined to endorse it because of substantial deletions that altered his findings, calling the edited version “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”

Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook emailed then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva and other LAFD officials with the subject line “Palisades AARR Non-Endorsement,” about an hour after the highly anticipated report was made public Oct. 8.

“Having reviewed the revised version submitted by your office, I must respectfully decline to endorse it in its current form,” Cook wrote in the email obtained by The Times. “The document has undergone substantial modifications and contains significant deletions of information that, in some instances, alter the conclusions originally presented.”

Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook complained to former interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva about deletions and revisions in the Palisades fire after-action report.

(L.A. City Mayor’s Office)

He continued, “While I fully understand the need to address potential liability concerns and to modify certain sections in consultation with the City Attorney to mitigate litigation risks, the current version appears highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards. I strongly urge you to reconsider publishing the report as it stands.”

In the email, Cook also raised concerns that the LAFD’s final report would be at odds with a report on the January wildfires commissioned by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, which has yet to be released.

“I am concerned that substantial disparities may exist between the two reports,” Cook wrote.

Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement Tuesday, “The Governor commissioned an independent review by the world’s leading fire safety experts to ensure the public receives a complete, accurate, and unvarnished accounting of the events leading up to the Palisades fire and how responding agencies carried out their response.”

Cook — who emails show provided a final draft of the after-action report to Villanueva in August — has declined to comment. Attempts to reach Villanueva were unsuccessful.

The LAFD has refused to answer questions from The Times about the deletions and revisions. Mayor Karen Bass’ office said the LAFD wrote and edited the report, and that the mayor did not demand changes.

On Sunday, The Times reported that Cook was upset about the changes to the report. The previous day, The Times had disclosed the watering down of the after-action report after analyzing seven drafts obtained through a public records request. The most significant changes involved the LAFD’s failure to order firefighters to stay on duty for an additional shift and to fully pre-deploy engines in high-risk areas before the Jan. 7 fire, as the wind warnings became increasingly dire. It’s unclear who exactly directed the revisions.

Cook’s Oct. 8 email laying out his concerns in stark language adds to the growing evidence that city and LAFD officials attempted to burnish the LAFD’s image in a report that should have been an honest assessment of the department’s failings in preparing for and fighting the fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. The goal of such a report is to prevent similar mistakes.

Cook’s email reached Bass’ office in mid-November, according to Bass spokesperson Clara Karger.

Karger said last week that “the Mayor has inquired with Chief Moore about the concerns,” referring to Jaime Moore, who became LAFD chief last month.

The Times submitted a public records request last month for all of the mayor’s emails about the after-action report, a request that the city has not yet fulfilled. Bass’ office provided Cook’s email to The Times on Tuesday.

The city had withheld Cook’s email from its response to a separate records request filed by an unknown party in October. Almost 180 of Cook’s emails were posted on the city’s records portal on Dec. 9, but the one that expressed his concerns about the report was missing. That email was only posted on the portal Tuesday, after The Times asked about it.

The LAFD did not respond to a Times query about why the email was not released with Cook’s other emails. Bass’s office also did not respond to a query about Cook’s concerns and the fact that they were withheld from the public.

Gene Cameron, who lived in the Palisades for 50 years before his home burned down in the Jan. 7 fire, was disturbed by the LAFD’s revisions, which he said amounted to a cover up.

“I appreciate his bravery to stand up against these unprofessional immoral edits,” he said of Cook, adding that the point of the report is not to assign blame, but to prevent future mistakes. “It’s just to establish a set of rules, procedures and guidelines so that this doesn’t happen again.”

City Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes the Palisades, said in a statement Tuesday that the city can’t fix systemic failures or rebuild public trust without full transparency.

“I’ve said from the beginning that LAFD should not be investigating itself. After a disaster of this magnitude, the public deserves a full, unfiltered accounting of what went wrong and why — and my independent after-action report will provide exactly that,” she said, referring to a report she requested that the City Council approved and funded earlier this year, though it hasn’t been completed.

Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment. She previously told The Times that she heard rumors that the author of the report was unhappy, but that she did not look into the matter.

A July email thread reviewed by The Times shows concern over how the after-action report would be received, with the LAFD forming a “crisis management workgroup.”

“The primary goal of this workgroup is to collaboratively manage communications for any critical public relations issue that may arise. The immediate and most pressing crisis is the Palisades After Action Report,” LAFD Asst. Chief Kairi Brown wrote in an email to eight other people.

“With significant interest from media, politicians, and the community, it is crucial that we present a unified response to anticipated questions and concerns,” Brown wrote. “By doing so, we can ensure our messaging is clear and consistent, allowing us to create our own narrative rather than reactive responses.”

Cook was not included on that email thread. It’s unclear how much of a role, if any, that group had on the revisions.

The after-action report has been widely criticized for failing to examine a New Year’s Day fire that later reignited into the Palisades fire. Bass has ordered the LAFD to commission an independent investigation into its missteps in putting out the earlier fire.

One edit to the after-action report involved language stating that the decision to not fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days.

The final report did not include that language, saying instead that the number of engine companies rolled out ahead of the fire “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”

A section on “failures” was renamed “primary challenges,” and an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched.

Another passage that was deleted said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment the day of the fire.

Two drafts contain notes typed in the margins with suggestions that seemed intended to soften the report’s effect and make the Fire Department look good. One note proposed replacing the image on the cover page — which showed palm trees on fire against an orange sky — with a “positive” one, such as “firefighters on the frontline.” The final report’s cover displays the LAFD seal.

The final version listed only 42 items in the section on recommendations and lessons learned, while the first version reviewed by The Times listed 74.

The author of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire was upset about changes made to the report, without his involvement, that downplayed the failures of city and LAFD leaders in preparing for and fighting the disastrous Jan. 7 fire, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The author’s complaints reached Mayor Karen Bass’ office in mid-November, after the LAFD had publicly released the report, said Clara Karger, a spokesperson for Bass.

“The Mayor has inquired with Chief Moore about the concerns,” Karger said last week, referring to LAFD Chief Jaime Moore.

The sources, who requested anonymity to protect their relationships with the LAFD and city officials, said the report by Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook was intended to be a final draft. Cook declined to comment.

The Times posted an article Saturday that analyzed seven drafts of the after-action report, obtained through a public records request. The most significant changes involved the LAFD’s deployment decisions before the fire, as the wind warnings became increasingly dire.

In one instance, LAFD officials removed language saying that the decision to not fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days.

Instead, the final report said that the number of engine companies rolled out ahead of the fire “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”

The deletions and revisions have drawn criticism from some who questioned the LAFD’s ability to acknowledge its mistakes before and during the blaze — and to avoid repeating them in the future.

In the months since the fire, residents who lost their homes have expressed outrage over unanswered questions and contradictory information about how top LAFD officials prepared for the dangerous weather forecast and how they handled a smaller New Year’s Day blaze, called the Lachman fire, which rekindled into the massive Palisades fire six days later.

On Saturday, after the report by The Times was published online, City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez issued a statement about the toning down of the after-action report.

“Today’s reporting makes clear that accountability is optional when after-action reports are conducted in-house with oversight by political appointees,” Rodriguez said. “If these reports are purposefully watered down to cover up failures, it leaves Angelenos, firefighters, and city officials without a full understanding of what happened and what needs to change. After-action reports must be independent to ensure honest assessments in order to avoid repeating disastrous errors and to protect our communities in the future.”

Former interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva, who oversaw the completion of the report before it was made public in October, did not respond to requests for comment.

Karger, the Bass spokesperson, said this month that the report “was written and edited by the Fire Department.” Bass’ office did not demand changes to the drafts and asked the LAFD to confirm only the accuracy of items such as how the weather and the department’s budget factored into the disaster, Karger said in an email.

The LAFD has refused to answer questions about the revisions and Cook’s concerns, citing an ongoing federal court case. Federal prosecutors have charged a former Palisades resident with setting the Lachman fire.

David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said it’s “disingenuous” of LAFD officials to cite the investigation as a reason they can’t respond to The Times’ inquiries.

“There’s nothing about the existence of a federal investigation that prohibits them from commenting,” Loy said. “They just choose not to comment.”

Three of the seven drafts of the after-action report obtained by The Times are marked with dates: Two versions are dated Aug. 25, and there is a draft from Oct. 6, two days before the LAFD released the final report to the public.

Some drafts of the after-action report described an on-duty LAFD captain calling Fire Station 23 in the Palisades on Jan. 7 to report that “the Lachman fire started up again,” indicating the captain’s belief that the Palisades fire was caused by a reignition of the earlier blaze.

The reference was deleted in one draft, then restored in the public version, which contains only a brief mention of the Lachman fire. Some have said that the after-action report’s failure to thoroughly examine the Lachman fire reignition was designed to shield LAFD leadership and the Bass administration from criticism and accountability.

Weeks after the report’s release, The Times reported that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area on Jan. 2, even though they had complained that the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch. Another battalion chief assigned to the LAFD’s risk management section knew about the complaints for months, but the department kept that information out of the after-action report.

After The Times’ report, Bass asked Villanueva to “thoroughly investigate” the LAFD’s missteps in putting out the Lachman fire.

Moore, an LAFD veteran who became chief last month, has been tasked with commissioning the independent investigation that Bass requested.

Several key items were wholly deleted from the after-action report. The final version listed only 42 items in the section on recommendations and lessons learned, while the first version reviewed by The Times listed 74.

A section on “failures” was renamed “primary challenges,” and an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched.

Another passage that was deleted said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment the day of the fire.

Two drafts contain notes typed in the margins with suggestions that seemed intended to soften the report’s effect and burnish the Fire Department’s image. One note proposed replacing the image on the cover page — which showed palm trees on fire against an orange sky — with a “positive” one, such as “firefighters on the frontline.” The final report’s cover displays the LAFD seal.

In addition to the mayor’s office, Cook’s concerns made their way to the president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, which provides civilian oversight for the LAFD. Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the board, told The Times that she heard rumors that the author of the report was unhappy, but that she did not seriously look into the matter.

“If I had to worry about every rumor that comes out of LAFD, I would spend my entire day, Monday through Friday, chasing down rumors,” she said.

She said she raised concerns with Villanueva and the city attorney’s office over the possibility that “material findings” were or would be changed.

“I did not feel like they were lying about anything,” she said. “I didn’t feel like they were trying to cover up anything.”

Pringle is a former Times staff writer.

What do fallen empires leave behind? Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s new work of fiction attempts to answer that question. “Three Stories of Forgetting” probes the inner worlds of three men scarred by their participation in Portugal’s history of rapacious colonialist intervention that ended in 1999. For nearly 600 years, the European republic was involved in a bloody land grab that at its peak controlled over 5.5 million square miles across Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Pereira de Almeida’s protagonists — Celestino, a slave trader; Boa Morte, a former soldier who had been conscripted to fight his fellow Africans in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence; and Bruma, an elderly plantation worker — live in a liminal state between past and present, searching for some measure of solace in a world that offers none. I chatted with Pereira de Almeida, who was born in Angola but was reared in Lisbon, about her haunting triptych of stories.

✍️ Author Chat

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida is author of “Three Stories of Forgetting,” a new novel exploring the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the Portuguese Empire.

(Humberto Brito)

Three stories of forgetting … but nothing is forgotten among these men.

All three men are tormented by what they can’t forget, although they don’t feel exactly guilty, in the case of Celestino and Boa Morte. Bruma is a different story. The “forgetting” of the title relates to the omission of the figures who do not appear in the book, or who appear only occasionally, episodically. Those who are forgotten are the victims and their story. These three stories are also chapters of a more general story of violence, that of colonialism, whose victims are largely forgotten to this day.

Boa Morte, a valet in Lisbon, carries an enormous burden of guilt; in order to expiate it, he tries to save a young street vagrant. Of course, all attempts at redemption in the book are futile — why is that?

I don’t think redemption is as common as much of today’s fiction seems to suggest. The experience of guilt or of an existence haunted by ghosts seems more common to me. Boa Morte was forgotten by Portugal, the country for which he gave his life, and his hateful behavior left him utterly alone. What would redeem his life? Boa Morte is inspired by a man I knew who became my friend and lived on the streets of Lisbon, just like the character. One day, he was found dead in an alley. Not all lives know redemption.

The three protagonists are captives of their pasts, because the past is still present. Can you speak to that?

After reading [British philosopher] Peter Geach’s sentence that opens his book “The Virtues,” I became interested in inquiring into the lives of people who may be, so to speak, “dead in the eyes of God.” The problem with this possibility, however, is that we may die in the eyes of God early in life, without knowing it, and yet live to old age and remain here.

This sentence is important to me, regardless of its religious meaning. It is important in that it opens up the possibility that we may have exhausted our share of grace in life and, as humans, need to keep going.

All three of these characters are looking for some kind of solace — whether it’s reverting to some kind of quiet life among living things that don’t talk back, or building a lean-to as a kind of sanctuary.

Perhaps these places they seek are, in very different ways, the only possible remnants of rest: and also places where questions have ceased. Among living things that don’t talk there are no witnesses, there is no guilt.

You can’t write stories like these without some degree of empathy — do you feel sorry for these men? What do you feel for them as a writer?

I agree with that. I don’t feel sorry for them, but I tried to get closer to them and understand them, without imposing my ideas and opinions on them, something I don’t like to do when I write novels. Instead, I preferred, as I usually prefer, to fly around them like an insect, to study them, to let them talk to me: It is a non-imposing approach, which lets the characters speak. In general, I tend to be interested in characters I don’t like and who wouldn’t treat me with the kindness I show them. It’s my way of seeking justice, in its contradictions, and of exploring ambiguity in human behavior: I want to create hospitality, and that means being able to extend my hospitality to characters whose deeds I condemn.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Carolyn Kellogg, Bethanne Patrick and Mark Athitakis select the best books of the year for The Times.

(Photo illustration by Josep Prat Sorolla / For The Times; book jackets from Scribner, Riverhead and Penguin Press)

Jim Ruland talked to Thurston Moore about his new book that chronicles the Sonic Youth guitarist’s love of free jazz. “I go out with my band and I play typical band gigs,” says Moore, “but I prefer being in a basement with a free jazz drummer any day of the week.”

Mark Athitakis finds favor with W. David Marx’s “Blank Space,” a sharp critique that maps the decline of our present culture, as well as Adam Morgan’s biography of 20th century literary firebrand Margaret C. Anderson, a trailblazer who bucked the prevailing culture to champion challenging art, including Joyce’s “Ulysses.” “If we want more works like ‘Ulysses’ in our world (and far less cringe) … it will demand a stubbornness from creators and dedication from consumers that the current moment is designed to strip from us,” Athatakis writes.

Finally, three critics weigh in on the 15 best books of 2025, while Mariella Rudi ticks off the nine best celebrity memoirs of the year.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Apollo, one of two bookstore cats, sleeping in a box at the Iliad bookstore in North Hollywood.

(Gerard Burkhart / For The Times)

The San Fernando Valley has lost many of its beloved bookshops over the last two decades, but North Hollywood’s Iliad bookshop remains. The store, which first opened its doors 28 years ago and remains the greatest purveyor of used books in all of Los Angeles, is the kind of tangled labyrinth teeming with titles that one can get lost in for hours. I spoke with Dan Weinstein about what is moving out of the doors this holiday season.

What is selling in the Christmas rush this year?

We tend to sell the same kinds of titles all year round, so it’s standard literature, science fiction and the handful of authors we can’t keep on the shelves: Octavia Butler, Charles Bukowski, Sarah J. Maas and Brandon Sanderson. Also, a lot of gift cards! Actually, January is our strongest month for sales — winter kicks in and people like to stay at home and read.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a loyal Iliad customer since the ’90s. Do you tend to see the same faces across the years?

Oh, we have very serious hardcore customers that come over and over again. Some of them even come on a daily basis. Fortunately, we are always putting good new inventory out.

What about Hollywood business? You have a tremendous inventory of art and photography books. Do set designers come in to find inspiration?

We do sell a lot to the entertainment industry. That really keeps us alive. If we were doing business in a city other than Los Angeles, I don’t think we would do nearly as well.

The Iliad Bookshop is located in North Hollywood at 5400 Cahuenga Blvd.

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