You might choose to read Ruth Ozeki's latest novel as another engrossing, original story – because it clearly is. And if you decide to stick the novel in your ears, you'll be thrilled and grateful to know that Ozeki herself reads to you – her...
"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. / ...
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 ...
Don Lee is definitely a good news-bad news sort of guy, albeit all in the same breath. Good news: he's not going to Texas this summer, because his fourth and latest book, The Collective, is published this month and he's going on a book tour so...
Two-thirds of the way through Julian Barnes' novel, which won the latest coveted Man Booker Prize, the protagonist's ex-wife quietly tells him, "'Tony, you're on your own now.'" Indeed, Tony Webster – middle-aged, retired, divorced (albeit rather amicably), his only child immersed with her own family – is seemingly...
An aborted suicide is probably not the most solid basis from which to start a lasting friendship ...
What does it take to update a 60+-year-old story? In the case of Usamaru Furuya's 21st-century manga adaptation of the literary classic Ningen Shikkaku, a semi-autobiographical novel by Dazai Osamu (published in 1948 in Japan, translated into English as No Longer Human in 1958), an...
Here are the two most important things I got out of Snow: 1. it definitely had memorable glimpses of Turkish social and cultural history that I had little to no knowledge of previously; 2. Orhan Pamuk is a clever, intelligent writer, which – given his array...
In densely populated Seoul, a mysterious man makes a lucrative living by helping "clients" commit suicide. He’s not exactly Dr. Death Kevorkian offering physically depleted bodies reprieve; instead he has a special talent for finding lost, disconnected souls ready to leave behind their unfulfilling existence...
