Too often they have been asked to fight in strange and distant places, for no clear purpose they could see and for no accomplishment they can measure.

WSJ: And the Fair Land

And yet, at a time of fast-melting glaciers and strange rains, of spreading deserts and rising seas, it is a frail and distant promise.

ECONOMIST: China, India and climate change

His affect can be distant and disorienting, a strange mixture of shy and cocky.

NEWYORKER: The Face of Facebook

Giant raindrops fall with loud taps on banana leaves, strange flowers with heady perfume bloom just for a day and waterfalls drape down distant hills like strands of tinsel.

BBC: Following the Buddha around Bombay

Set in America in the not-too-distant future, the novel braided countless characters and ideas into a deliriously strange and self-consciously literary plot, involving a tennis academy, a recovery facility, a dysfunctional family and a debilitatingly gripping film.

ECONOMIST: The fevered imaginings of a dazzling American writer