His spare, icily precise books explore humanity’s most serious themes, including South Africa’s legacy of apartheid. And not all of them are downers. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
Tag: Literature
Yiyun Li’s ‘The Book of Goose’ Wins PEN/Faulkner Award
Yiyun Li’s novel “The Book of Goose,” the story of two mischievous teenage girls in post-World War II France and their improbable literary success, has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
2023 Whiting Awards Recognize 10 Emerging Writers
The recipients of the $50,000 prize, which were announced on Wednesday evening, show an exceeding amount of talent and promise, according to the prize’s judges. The Whiting Awards aim to “recognize excellence and promise in a spectrum of emerging talent, giving most winners their first chance to devote themselves full time to their own writing, or to take bold new risks in their work…” Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
The Essential Colette
The author, considered by some to be the greatest French writer of her time, played with words and convention. Here’s where to start with her work. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
Is America Finally Ready for Ben Okri?
The acclaimed Nigerian British writer is resonating with American readers in a moment of national crisis. “Maybe nations go through a time when they just can’t hear certain kinds of voices,” he said. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
‘The Singularities’ by John Banville
The Irish novelist John Banville writes prose of such luscious elegance that it’s all too easy to view his work as an aesthetic project, an exercise in pleasure giving … But what drives Banville — and his relentless hunt for the ideal adjective and simile and cadence — is a desire to touch something elusive and not quite nameable while providing a parallel or overlapping commentary on that doomed but never pointless effort. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
Shehan Karunatilaka Wins Booker Prize for ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’
The Sri Lankan writer received the award, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world, for his second novel, which examines the trauma of his country’s decades-long civil war. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
‘The English Understand Wool’ by Helen DeWitt
Part of a series of New Directions “storybooks” meant to be read in a single sitting, “The English Understand Wool” is a little gift to DeWitt’s (often ardent) readers and an inviting primer for readers new to her. DeWitt is one of our most ingenious writers, a master of the witty fable, and she pulls off her trick here through marvelous specificity of voice and a plot that hums like German machinery. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
On Java Road by Lawrence Osborne
Human nature and atmosphere will always interest Osborne more than the traditional pyrotechnics of a thriller. The palpable sense of dread that hovers over Hong Kong and Osborne’s exploration of Adrian’s own moral conundrum is what kept me turning the pages … Osborne skillfully — and with exquisite prose — probes the nexus of community and character, and how where we are shapes who we are. Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
Colm Toibin’s ‘The Magician’ wins Folio Prize for literature
The jury of three other writers — Tessa Hadley, William Atkins and Rachel Long — said they surprised themselves by reaching a unanimous decision. They said Toibin’s book “is such a capacious, generous, ambitious novel, taking in a great sweep of 20th century history yet rooted in the intimate detail of one man’s private life.” Read more
(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)
