Hapa Jordanian American Diana Abu-Jaber established herself with her first three titles – novels Arabian Jazz and Crescent, and memoir The Language of Baklava – as a lauded, award-winning Arab American literary voice. She leaves her own origins off the page in this chilling psychological thriller – her first, but most likely not her last....
Okay, so Tana French’s website says that she won the coveted Oscar-for-mysteries Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 2007, but if you check the actual Edgars site (which has an 'I've never seen this anywhere else, but every award site should have one!'-database), that...
At 24, Susannah Cahalan, life was just about perfect. She was a budding journalist working for the New York Post, she went home to a tiny but cozy Manhattan studio, and she had just started a promising new relationship. And then the madness set in, starting...
It began with a story. I know, I know, that's what they all say. But Jessica Soffer's debut novel, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots, really did begin with a short story she wrote in 2009 for a graduate school assignment. In sharp contrast to the novel's...
In both content and form, The Wasted Vigil is a book of extremes. For readers who have experienced Nadeem Aslam before (and the apt word really is 'experience'), you'll recognize (and be awed by) his mesmerizing prose ...
So why is it that all good things are supposed to come to an end? I’d be perfectly happy with another 20 more volumes. Really, is that too much to ask? With an enormously huffy sigh of resignation, I moaningly offer a final post for Naoki...
This might be a spoiler of sorts: The advance galley is printed with a March 12, 2013 pub date, but when I went searching for an image of the book's cover to load here, online bookstores list a May date. Hmmm ...
"They say a person dies twice. / First comes the death of the self. / Then, later, comes the death of being forgotten by friends. / If that is so, / I shall never know that second death. / ...
So first off, I read backwards (see yesterday's post) ...
I realize it's only March, but I'm pretty convinced Mohsin Hamid's latest will be one of my top three favorites for 2013. True, such a pronouncement might seem rash in a year that will see new titles from Nadeem Aslam (The Blind Man's Garden next month), Khaled Hosseini...
If you look at the bottom of this post at "Filed under," you'll see this title is listed as both "Fiction" and "Nonfiction." That's not a mistake – and the explanation is found in the book's "Postscript": "This is a book of fiction based on...
This recent novel-in-translation by the 2012 Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, originally published in China in 2004, embodies a labyrinthine web of changing alliances and terrifying vengeance. Set during the Boxer Rebellion, the turn-of-the-20th-century Chinese uprising against Western imperialism, it features pivotal figure Sun Meiniang, who...
I'm compelled to start backwards with a number: 84. As children's writer (more than 25 times over) Maryann Macdonald explains in her ending "Author's Note," 84% of French children survived the horrors of World War II; in fact, "more children survived in France than in any other...
1958, Little Rock, Arkansas: A year has passed since nine courageous African American students – history's "Little Rock Nine" – integrated Central High School. Just days before the new school year is scheduled to begin that September 15, then-Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus closed the city's three high...
First things first: choose the page, not the headset. Carrington MacDuffie's voice is just too old to narrate the inner lives of two teenage sisters – no lilting resonance, no youthful lightness. Might I suggest that the better options for aurally appreciating the extraordinary Francisco X. Stork would be Marcelo...
How I chose this: It actually had nothing to with that shiny 2005 Michael L. Printz Award sticker on the cover. The narrator, Kim Mai Guest, made me do it! Guest, who is apparently 43 (so says her Wiki bio), has one of those eternal voices, always...
A couple of days after filing my feature on Pauline A. Chen, I got on the phone to ask her all the questions I couldn’t find answers to out there in the virtual world of google-ing. True confession moment: I admit I was a wee bit...
When the teenaged Pauline Chen arrived in Harvard Yard, her intention was to become a writer. The American-born daughter of Taiwanese parents, she grew up amidst Long Island’s endless strip malls and was determined – she wrote in July 2012 at Tribute Books – to shed her “provincial” upbringing....
A couple of months ago, one of my trusty literary friends with whom I often share must-read titles told me about seeing 'everyone' carrying this novel around last fall. So she decided to see for herself what the hubbub was about. Once she started, she...
I'm facing a bit of a conundrum with this book: just how little can I tell you and still entice you to check out this astonishing debut novel by emerging-fully-formed-like-Athena, new author Jeff Backhaus? Hmm ...
