*STARRED REVIEW If anything about this sounds familiar, that might be because you may have already come across the TEDxEuston talk of the same name, presented by Adichie in December 2012 and widely circulated. Think of that as a highly successful test run, and consider investing...
*STARRED REVIEW At 27, Majime – whose very name means “serious, diligent” – is recruited from sales by the Dictionary Editorial Department of Gembu Books to help compile The Great Passage, an überdictionary destined to guide users across the vast sea of words. Socially awkward Majime embarks...
'Adua' explores the relationship between colonizer and colonized Before Igiaba Scego’s novel, Adua, even begins, what’s instantly striking is the “Contents” page, which reveals a trio of chapter titles – “Adua,” “Talking-To,” “Zoppe” – that repeat over 30 chapters. Adua is the daughter, Zoppe the father,...
*STARRED REVIEW Loss and longing cause the men and women in Yoon's (Once the Shore; Snow Hunters) second collection to move, and often keep moving, sometimes in search of sanctuary, other times seeking escape. A doctor returns from war to his childhood home where his mother died;...
“Nope! I’ve never had any aspirations to be a musician”: Don Lee talks LONESOME LIES BEFORE US When Don Lee’s first book came out 16 years ago, he probably didn’t know then that more than half his writing career would be spent in Rosarita Bay, a fictional...
Q&A with Thi Bui: Writer, Illustrator, Teacher On the cover of Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir is a perfect quote: “A book to break our heart and heal it,” blurbs fellow Vietnamese American refugee and 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction...
Talking Race, Kid Lit, and EVERYBODY’S SON with Thrity Umrigar About 15 years ago, when Thrity Umrigar was already a successful journalist and about to become an English professor, she attended a lecture at Emerson College in Boston and left with her first literary agent. Shortly thereafter, her debut...
*STARRED REVIEW The morning after Mia and daughter Pearl return the rental key in the Richardsons' mailbox, the youngest Richardson, Izzy, sets "little fires everywhere," destroying the family home. Following her magnificent debut, Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng’s spectacular sophomore work again manipulates time...
In thrice voicing Linda Wallheim, the Mormon bishop’s murder-solving wife, Kirsten Potter has settled comfortably into a quixotic emotional range that can move from stiff politeness to philosophical musing to overwrought shrillness without much warning. Confronted with a third dead body – “How does this always...
Mysteries and thrillers make up a sizable portion of the Japanese literary market. Thanks to the international success of Keigo Higashino, Natsuo Kirino, and Miyuki Miyabe – and, just as importantly, their translators – contemporary Japanese crime fiction proliferates on Western shelves. Below is a list...
The back cover insists ME “centers on the ‘It’s me’ telephone scam” in which a caller often targets the elderly, seeking funds to cover a false emergency. The ploy is more a brief narrative catalyst here; McDonald’s, in comparison, gets enough pagetime to make the novel occasionally...
After spontaneously cutting off eight inches of hair, Wang's never-named narrator returns to her chemistry lab and smashes five beakers. She insists, "Beakers are cheap," yet the personal price is inestimable: the shattered vessels parallel an equal number of portentous changes involving her PhD program,...
The wait is over: Haruki Murakami's latest collection of short stories hit shelves last week and yes, indeed – Men Without Women is a definitive seven-part delight. But once you've finished, the waiting begins yet again, oh sigh, for Maestro Murakami's next book. In the meantime, we've prepared a...
*STARRED REVIEW Narrator Sartaj Garewal’s energy couldn’t be more rousingly infectious as he voices the unforgettable characters in Adiga’s (The White Tiger) latest. Raised in a Mumbai slum by a fiercely demanding father, the two Kumar brothers are destined to become cricket champions by the sheer...
*STARRED REVIEW Laurie Frankel’s third novel is her most personal: as the mother of a transgender daughter, she writes what she knows with clarity, truth, and heart. Rosie and Penn already have four sons when Claude arrives. A remarkable child by all accounts, by age 3,...
While Columbus is credited with discovering the Americas, notable scholars and historians have argued that Chinese explorers traveled around the world in the early 15th century and created a surviving map that shows America on its route. Imagine if those ancient explorers had stayed. The history of Asians...
“Throughout my life I’ve looked to books for all sorts of reasons,” Will Schwalbe reveals, “to comfort me, to amuse me, to distract me, and to educate me.” Reading, discussing, and exalting books eased him and his late mother through the final months of her...
'Men Without Women' is Murakami at his whimsical best For Haruki Murakami aficionados, reading Men Without Women, Murakami's 20th book to be translated into English, is a whimsical delight. The seven stories in his fourth story collection present another captivating treasure hunt of familiar Murakami motifs...
'The Leavers,' inspired by a real story, confronts transracial adoption “Everyone had stories they told themselves to get through the days,” Deming Guo muses the evening of his 22nd birthday, summing up a lifetime of leaving – and being left – that has defined his short...
The unrelenting conflict between Palestine and Israel keeps the Middle East in the news. But for a fuller picture of the Palestinian and Palestinian-American experience than what the media can provide, here’s a starter reading list. For a list of recommended titles about Palestine for young, middle-grade,...
