Author: GR

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Dissident Hong Kong Bookseller Lam Wing-kee Dies Aged 70

He was one of several booksellers detained in 2015 after selling material critical of the political elite on China’s mainland. He fled to Taiwan – which is seen by Beijing as a renegade province that must be reunited – in 2019 for fear he would be sent back to China under Hong Kong’s proposed extradition bill. Taiwan’s authorities said at the time that the reopening of Lam’s Causeway Bay Books bookshop was a symbol of democracy and freedom on the island. Read more

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The American City Where Almost Everyone Seems To Be Writing a Book

The chief reason for Iowa City’s bookish demeanor celebrates its 90th anniversary this year; in 1936, the town’s University of Iowa set up the first creative writing degree in the United States, after decades of nurturing creative writing talent as part of wider academic programs. Today, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is globally famous, with a roster of former faculty and alumni that reads like a who’s who of modern American letters — Kurt Vonnegut, Curtis Sittenfeld, Philip Roth, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, to name a few. The Pulitzers and National Book Awards for alumni continue to stack up and in 2008, the town was named America’s first UNESCO City of Literature. Read more

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‘Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep’ by Paul Tremblay

Whether he’s playing with traditional novelistic forms, holding conversations with characters across time, or pushing his stories to their bleakest and strangest possible conclusions (if they have concrete conclusions at all) Tremblay is a daring novelist, never playing it safe for his audience or himself. The author of A Head Full of Ghosts, Horror Movie, and more is always pushing for something in his fiction, digging into the core of an issue until he finds its bloody, beating heart. Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep, Tremblay’s latest novel, is no different. From the title alone you might surmise certain things about the narrative, from its Philip K. Dick influence to its sci-fi-horror premise, and you’d be right. But Tremblay always pushes beyond those initial assumptions, and here we get not just a gripping sci-fi-horror showcase, but something much stranger and more profound: An exploration of what it means to be human, fragile bodies and all, in the age of AI. Read more

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‘Transcription’ by Ben Lerner Wins Orwell Prize for Political Fiction

American writer Ben Lerner has won this year’s Orwell prize for political fiction for Transcription, a novel exploring technology and memory. In nonfiction, the prize went to Karen Bartlett for The Escape from Kabul, which looks at Afghan women lawyers who came under threat after the fall of Kabul in 2021. Read more

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‘Trash! A Garbageman’s Story’

“The garbageman is the Sisyphus of our consumer society, condemned to go from house to house picking up bags, swept along day after day in the never-ending flow of refuse we produce,” writes Montréal sanitation worker Pare-Poupart in his bewitching debut memoir … Enlightening, unpretentious, and gently political, Pare-Poupart’s fascinating account will help readers view their garbage in a whole new light. It’s a treasure. Read more

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