Guernica’s most-read pieces of 2010 include a memoir by a Chinese terrorist who, gulp, tore a poster of the Chairman (and rightfully did hard labor), a proposal to overturn American law with Sharia, a story by the totally unheard-of nobody Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and an interview with the very, very dead John Updike.

1. Muslim Grrrls by Rafia Zakaria

2. Quixotic by Edith Grossman

3. Nixon’s Nose by Xiaoda Xiao

4. Living With the Enemy by Susie Linfield

5. The Frugal Superpower by Michael Mandelbaum

6. A Carefully Crafted Fuck You by Nathan Schneider

7. Updike Redux by Lila Azam Zanganeh

8. Writers, Plain and Simple by Claire Messud

9. Lucky Girl by Bridget Potter

10. Sevigny on Goya by John Sevigny

11. Food Among the Ruins (2009) by Mark Dowie

12. Seeds of Suicide by Marie-Monique Robin

13. The Pleasure of Flinching by Nicholas Sautin

14. Astore: Hope and Change by William J. Astore

15. Obama’s War by Tariq Ali

16. Friedrichs: Why We Still Blame Victims of Rape by Ellen Freidrichs

17. In Search of a Modest Proposal by Corinne Ramey

18. By Bread Alone by J. Malcolm Garcia

19. Third Degree Burns by Jay Baron Nicorvo

20. Love in the Time of Capital by Jesse Tangen-Mills

21. Landslide by Rebecca Gould

22. Intelligence Without Design (2009) by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad

23. Quality Street by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

24. A Woolly Problem by Heidi Cullen

25. La Violencia by Ed Vulliamy