ArteFact

Naoki Urasawa’s 74-episode anime series Monster (directed by Masayuki Kojima) provides a slow, graphic, confronting, blow-by-blow account of a person’s relationship with past, future, and others. In keeping with the title, the series provides a visceral portrayal of both the personification of monsters, and of how close a person—even one we consider “good”—can be to becoming a monster themselves.

The luminous novel Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, takes the form of a book-length epistle from a Congregationalist minister to his seven year old son...