The Zenith by Duong Thu Huong
Huong’s sixth novel in translation imagines the final days of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh in a project of Tolstoyesque landscape and character.
Huong’s sixth novel in translation imagines the final days of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh in a project of Tolstoyesque landscape and character.
Author Hisham Matar discusses the Libyan Revolution’s effect on writing novels, the difference between reading and talking, and why he does not identify as an intellectual.
Rosie Dastgir’s deeply satisfying first novel, A Small Fortune, concerns an extended Pakistani family in contemporary England.
This week’s feature is Contributing Editor Natalie Bakopoulos‘s debut novel, The Green Shore (Simon & Schuster), which releases today. Set in Athens and Paris during the military dictatorship of Greece (1967-1974), the book traces one family’s experience of love and resistance as they negotiate the rule of the Colonels and the fallout from the junta. Bakopoulos holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan, where she now teaches. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Ninth Letter, Salon, The New York Times, and Granta Online, and received a 2010 O. Henry Award, a Hopwood Award, and a Platsis […]
In 2009 I attended the second annual Sozopol Fiction Seminars, sponsored by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation and held each May on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. I lost my sunglasses in the sea, which the Bulgarians told me meant I had to return. This year I did go back, and most things have remained the same. There are still five English-speaking fellows and five Bulgarians, and the bus ride from the capital city of Sofia cross-country to Sozopol is both long and beautiful. Elizabeth Kostova, whom one might assume has too big of a name to share her work […]
Hello again, FWR friends. Welcome to the latest installment of our “First Looks” series, which highlights soon-to-be released books that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. We publish “First Looks” here on the FWR blog around the 15th of each month, and as always, I’d love to hear your comments and your recommendations of forthcoming titles. Please drop me a line anytime: erika(at)fictionwritersreview(dot)com, and thanks in advance. This month’s First Looks picks take us in a decidedly international direction. Let’s begin with The Last Hundred Days, Patrick McGuinness’s debut novel, which was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize […]
Though written in English, Luana Monteiro’s debut collection is firmly rooted in Brazilian culture — carnaval to Coetzee, Candomblé to Christianity.
The Dutch author Nescio wrote little, quite rarely, and under a pseudonym that means “I don’t know” – yet he’s quite famous in Holland. In the first English translation of his major stories, a group of poor artists struggle to make sense of Amsterdam between the wars. The world is changing out from under them – sound familiar?
Popular Argentinian writer Eduardo Sacheri has said that “writing is a special way to read.” In this review of The Secret in Their Eyes, Denise Delgado explores the similarities and differences between Sacheri’s first novel and the Academy-Award winning film adaptation he helped write.
Does the lowly individual stand a chance against the blunt force of the mass? Anita Desai’s novella collection, The Artist of Disappearance, celebrates the wish to be left alone, and the raw agony of the desire to be seen.
