Amazingly, I am always catching the impressive Margot Livesey’s (Banishing Verona) novels on the run. Or as excerpts in The New Yorker. Or something like that. I mention this by way of pointing out the powerful magnetic pull of Livesey’s prose. Her new opus is no different—immediately
If you can point to the globe and find Belarus, more power to you. Poet Valzhyna Mort is a Belarusian cultural nationalist, well-regarded and -awarded in Europe. She now lives in the U.S. and this bilingual edition is her first tome published in this country. The New Yorker
Portuguese novelist JoséEduardo Agualuso is introduced to English-speaking Americans with this crime story set in Angola, where Felix Ventura trades in manufacturing pasts for customers requiring a nobler lineage. The odd ensemble of characters and the volatile setting provide a well-rounded story with surprising resonance.
I have been a devotee of former Harper’s editor Colin Harrison’s (The Havana Room) writing from his first novel (of six), and he rarely disappoints. His grasp of the modern world’s infrastructure—high finance, information technology, various forensics—as well as a microscopic understanding of urban life
Nigerian writer Uwem Akpan also happens to be a Jesuit priest with an MFA from the University of Michigan. His stories have won prizes and been published in The New Yorker. His first book and story collection are a clear and focused portrayal of the gauntlet of deprivation and depredations
Self-exiled in the early ‘70s (in response to a military coup when her work was banned and her life threatened) Uruguayan writer Christina Peri Rossi wrote these poems during her first years in Spain—apparently they were too personally painful for publication when first written. Included are two essays
Amy Bloom responds to my query about her current reading: Jane EyreThe Collected Poems of Jane Kenyon Robert McCrum, who has spent 10 years at the literary helm of Britain’s Observer and before that, as editor at Faber and Faber, steps down and offers a thoughtful view of the
I suspect that Don Winslow will never write a book that grabbed me as much as his epic thriller The Power of the Dog, but that won’t stop me from reading his stuff with hope in my heart. His newest tome (not to be confused with the 1941 Howard
Much-heralded artist Jessica Abel and husband Matt Madden assemble a 15-lesson curriculum for creating comics (or if you will, graphic novels). She is a busy bee, also releasing two other books (Life Sucks and La Perdida). That’s it for my words; have a peek at the pictures.
I dimly remember seeing Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend on a twin bill with a Laurel and Hardy short—I think Nixon was president—and I suspect there was a kind of a shift in how I saw things; looking back, watching films was never quite the same. Godard was
