Li Kotomi from Taiwan was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize on July 14 for her Japanese-language novel “Higanbana ga Saku Shima” (The island where red spider lilies bloom). Read more
Knopf Names Jordan Pavlin Its Editor in Chief
Ms. Pavlin, a longtime editor at the publishing house who has worked with Ayana Mathis, Tommy Orange and Yaa Gyasi, succeeds Sonny Mehta, who died in 2019. Read more
Self-censorship hits Hong Kong book fair in wake of national security law
Booksellers at Hong Kong’s annual book fair are offering a reduced selection of books deemed politically sensitive, as they try to avoid violating a sweeping national security law imposed on the city last year. Read more
Iranian Operatives Planned to Kidnap a Brooklyn Author, Prosecutors Say
An Iranian American journalist living in Brooklyn who has been a sharp critic of the Iranian government was the target of an international kidnapping plot orchestrated by an intelligence network in Iran, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. Read more
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€4.55m Marquis de Sade manuscript acquired for French nation
Original scroll of The 120 Days of Sodom, written while the writer was jailed in the Bastille, has been bought as an ‘emblem of artistic freedom’ Read more
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Weird as Hell: Falling in Love With Speculative Poetry
Speculative poetry is a hybrid creature that combines elements of poetry and prose, in addition to blurring the line between realism and fabulism, giving it a unique approach that no other medium can replicate. Read more
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The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream
In his latest, journalist and creative nonfiction professor Jobb richly embellishes his grim central tale with carefully researched setting, detail, and social mores of the late Victorian era, elegantly contrasted with his eponymous fiend, Thomas Neill Cream (1852-1892), “a doctor from Canada” and “a new kind of killer, choosing victims at random and killing without remorse.” Read more
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Mark Twain’s Connecticut Estate Lists for $4.2 Million
Twain, whose given name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, built “Stormfield” in 1908 in the style of a Tuscan villa and named it after his short story “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven,” according to the listing with Laura Freed Ancona of William Pitt and Julia B. Fee Sotheby’s International Realty, who brought the home in Redding to the market on Saturday. Read more
Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist will finally be made into a movie, courtesy Will Smith.
At long last, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist—international bestseller, Guinness World Record holder (for most translated work by a living author), inspirational parable, and um, favorite novel of everyone you know who doesn’t really read novels—is coming to the big screen. Read more
Flogged, imprisoned, murdered: today, being a poet is a dangerous job
…dictators sense the danger of poetry, which is why poets in their regimes are routinely imprisoned, tortured, killed or forced into exile. Read more
