Julie Wu’s debut novel, The Third Son (Algonquin), depicts the struggles of a Taiwanese boy, Saburo Tong, to escape his impoverished, cruel background and to establish a meaningful adult life for himself, a journey that takes him from poverty and oppression in Taiwan to the opportunity and relative freedom of 1950s America.
Croatian writer Robert Perisic talks with Steven Wingate about his latest novel Our Man in Iraq, the modern global economy and its relationship to developing nations, and the slide between journalism and fiction writing.
Natalie Bakopoulos, author of the debut novel The Green Shore talks about domesticity in the face of fear, the importance of what you don’t see, the fighting spirit of art, and a marriage proposal in a taxi.
This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You, British author Jon McGregor’s new collection, assures you otherwise with plenty of big, bad, foreboding tales.
An invented language, off-stage heroes, searing political comedy. Katarina Matsson sits down with award-winning Swedish playwright and novelist Jonas Hassen Khemiri to discuss translation, the power-struggle of words, rats, germs, leaving home to write about it, and why hearing voices doesn’t necessarily mean you’re crazy.
A shoebox full of the mementos of a Parisian woman Sparked Elena Mauli Shapiro’s debut novel, 13, rue Thérèse. The objects fall into the hands of a fictional researcher, and through the sifting of photographs, letters and souvenirs a life emerges. Steven Wingate and Shapiro discuss research, happy accidents, and the power of what we save.
Despite the boycott, Preeta Samarasan travels to Sri Lanka for the Galle Literary Festival and finds friends, eager young writers, and a love for a country that reminds her powerfully of her native Malaysia. She reflects on the power of free speech in a country recovering from many years of civil war.
Where do film noir, post-communist Bulgarian fiction, and black comedy intersect? In Vladislav Todorov’s searing noir-meets-social-commentary novel, Zift. Contributing Editor Steven Wingate and Todorov discuss poisonings, the resurgence of narrative fiction in post-communist Eastern Europe, the idea that “many people enjoyed spying on their neighbors” for the state, and much more.
Jaunary 12, 2011 marked the 1-year anniversary of the 7.0 earthquake that rocked Haiti. The news this past week has been filled with scenes of the temporary camps set up to house the one million Haitians left homeless by the quake – largely unchanged a year later. Just yesterday, police arrested Jean-Claude Duvalier – the [...]
Over at MelvilleHouse Publishing there’s an interesting blog post, In Support of Translation, along with responses, about the Best Translated Book Award being funded by Amazon. Editor Dennis Loy Johnson writes:
As the winner of the most recent Best Translated Book (BTB) prize for fiction — for our book, The Confessions of Noa Weber, by Gail [...]
