New Books In Literature

Today I talked to Daisy Rockwell, translator of Geetanjali Shree's novel Tomb of Sand (Tilted Axis Press, 2021) An eighty-year-old woman slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention – including striking up a friendship with a hijra (trans) woman – confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more 'modern' of the two. To her family’s consternation, Ma insists on travelling to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist. Rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Geetanjali Shree's playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or gend

In R. F. Kuang’s Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (Harper Voyager in 2022), we meet Robin Swift. Orphaned by Cholera in Canton in 1828, he is brought to London by a mysterious Professor Lovell, who trains him in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, to prepare him for enrollment in Oxford University’s Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Yet as Robin soon finds out, the glamour and glory of Babel is not all it seems, and thriving at the center of knowledge and power demands complicity in the violence and militarism of empire…. Tune in to this NBN episode to hear Rebecca discuss what motivated her to write Babel, the inspiration behind Babel’s magical system of silver-working and the histories of anti-colonial struggle she wanted to illuminate in her writing, how real-life friendship inspired the friendships of Babel, the importance of sensitivity readers to imagining more diverse and complex characters, the joy of learning languages and t

In this 2011 episode from The Vault, Hilton Als reads from, and discusses, His Sister, Her Monologue, a novella he published in Mcsweeney's #35. Als is a staff writer at the New Yorker, and his theater criticism was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He is the author of two books. The Women, published in 1996., and White Girls, which came out in 2014. "A Pryor Love," His New Yorker profile of Richard Pryor appeared in 1999. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I talked to Howard Jay Smith about his new novel Meeting Mozart (The Sager Group, 2020). It’s 1946, and a young army intelligence officer is awakened early by a gruff priest who needs another tenor for his church service. But Corporal Jake Conegliano has been invited to see a performance of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, and his ride is leaving soon. The Abbe Luigi Hudal won’t take no for an answer, and threatens eternal damnation, until Jake says that he’s Jewish, but will be happy to sing in the choir the following week. The priest tells him that having a Jewish heathen in his church would be like bringing Satan himself to his door. As luck would have it, that’s the day Jake meets the love of his love and sets in motion a journey to discover both his own history and the history of a famous ancestor, known to history as the librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. He was a Catholic priest who wrote the librettos for three of Mozart’s most beloved operas, and he was also Emmanuel Conegliano, a converso from a Jewish

Today I talked to about Amma’s Daughters: A Memoir (Athabasca UP, 2018). This book is available open access here.  As a precocious young girl, Surekha knew very little about the details of her mother Amma’s unusual past and that of Babu, her mysterious and sometimes absent father. The tense, uncertain family life created by her parents’ distant and fractious marriage and their separate ambitions informs her every action and emotion. Then one evening, in a moment of uncharacteristic transparency and vulnerability, Amma tells Surekha and her older sister Didi of the family tragedy that changed the course of her life. Finally, the daughters begin to understand the source of their mother’s deep commitment to the Indian nationalist movement and her seemingly unending willingness to sacrifice in the name of that pursuit. In this re-memory based on the published and unpublished work of Amma and Surekha, Meenal Shrivastava, Surekha’s daughter, uncovers the history of the female foot soldiers of Gandhi’s national move

Elaine Hsieh Chou is a Taiwanese American writer from California. A 2017 Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow at NYU and a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Fellow, her short fiction appears in The Normal School, Black Warrior Review, Guernica, Tin House Online and Ploughshares. Her debut novel Disorientation is out now from Penguin Press (US) and Picador (UK). Her short story collection Where are You Realy From? is forthcoming from Penguin Press in spring 2024. Books Recommended in this Episode: Don Lee, The Collective Brandon Taylor, Real Life David Lodge, Changing Places Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by beco

The Women Could Fly (Amistad, 2022) is set in our contemporary world with one big difference. A belief in witches gives rise to laws and a culture that encourages women to be married by the age of 30, locking them in a 1950s-style domesticity with the threat that they can be burned at the stake for merely being accused of violating the rules. In Megan Giddings’ second novel, the reader must first grapple with the question: Are witches real? As the story progresses, the question shifts: Even if witches exist, why are they considered nefarious? “On a basic level, I just really wanted to write about magic,” Giddings says. “I wanted to write about a world where anything seems possible, but still people lean into their worst impulses and keep things small. … I wanted to show the ways that people constrain themselves. And I thought magic—something that could be limitless, something that could change anything—was the right way to get in there.” Megan Giddings is the author of Lakewood. She has degrees from the Unive

In or, on being the other woman (Duke UP, 2022), Simone White considers the dynamics of contemporary black feminist life. Throughout this book-length poem, White writes through a hybrid of poetry, essay, personal narrative, and critical theory, attesting to the narrative complexities of writing and living as a black woman and artist. She considers black social life—from art and motherhood to trap music and love—as unspeakably troubling and reflects on the degree to which it strands and punishes black women. She also explores what constitutes sexual freedom and the rewards and dangers that come with it. White meditates on trap music and the ways artists such as Future and Meek Mill and the sonic waves of the drum machine convey desire and the black experience. Charting the pressures of ordinary black womanhood, White pushes the limits of language, showing how those limits can be the basis for new modes of expression. Brittney Edmonds is an Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies at UW-Madison. I specializ

Rena Rossner is a literary agent at The Deborah Harris Agency, based in Jerusalem, Israel, which represents Israeli, Palestinian and other Internationally-based authors. She is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars Program, studied at Trinity College, Dublin and holds an MA in History from McGill University. She is the author of the cookbook Eating the Bible (Skyhorse, 2014) and the novel, The Sisters of the Winter Wood (Redhook/Orbit, 2018). In our interview we talk about her most recent novel, The Light of the MIdnight Stars (Redhook/Orbit, 2021) and her career as a literary agent. Mel Rosenberg is a professor of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is also the founder of Ourboox, a web platform that allows anyone to create and share awesome flipbooks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast

The Extraordinary by Brad Schaeffer (Post Hill Press 2021) tells the story of a family that is forced to confront both autism and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Fourteen-year-old Wes is unable to communicate with anyone except his father, who calls him an Ex (extraordinary). Most others are Ords (ordinary). Wes’s father is a captain in the Marine Corp and returns home broken in body and spirit after a third tour in Iraq. Wes has no idea how to adapt to this new version of his father. He needs order – his day is regimented, and he follows a timed sequence that includes watching the entire movie version of Sound of Music every morning. Wes’s relationship with his mother and two siblings is constrained and sometimes confusing – he only feels love from his father. This is a lovely and emotional tale about how a family can be easily torn and not so easily put back together. Brad Schaeffer was born in Baltimore, MD but grew up in a suburb of Chicago. After attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham

Julia May Jonas is a writer, director, and the founder of theater company Nellie Tinder. She has taught at Skidmore College and NYU and lives in Brooklyn with her family. Vladimir (Simon & Schuster, 2022) is her first novel. Books Recommended in this Episode: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter In the Dark Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin Sarah Moss, Ghost Wall Elisa Albert, Human Blues  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Mohsin Hamid is the author of five novels -- The Last White Man, Exit West, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Moth Smoke -- and a book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations. His writing has been translated into forty languages, featured on bestseller lists, and adapted for the cinema. Born in Lahore, he has spent about half his life there and much of the rest in London, New York, and California. Mohsin Recommends: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premiu

Ben Stroud speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Three Omens of Federico da Montefeltro,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. The story fictionalizes a moment in the lives of historical figures from fifteenth-century Italy. In this conversation, Ben talks about finding his interest in writing stories set in ancient and medieval times, and what kind of research and play is required to blend fact and fiction in those stories. He also discusses his process for revising his work and teaching creative writing. Ben Stroud is the author of the story collection Byzantium, which won the 2013 Story Prize Spotlight Award and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize for fiction. His stories have been published in Harper’s, Zoetrope, Virginia Quarterly Review, Oxford American, VICE, and One Story, among other places, and have been anthologized in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, New Stories from the South, and The Best American Mystery Stories. He is currently associate professor of Englis

A trained killer without a drop of human compassion shows up early in Laurie Buchanan’s second Sean McPherson thriller (Iconoclast (Spark Press 2022)). She has no problem murdering a woman and taking her place at a writer’s retreat in beautiful Washington State. But she’s controlled by a Seattle-based crime family that is spreading its tentacles across the Bellingham Bay, a perfect location for trafficking drugs and people across the Pacific Ocean. The book opens with the murder of a priest, who turns out to be the brother of the retreat’s proprietor, and a gourmet cook. The lovely Pine and Quill offers several cabins, one for each writer, and enticing-sounding gourmet meals. The iconoclast is there to kill someone who might know too much, and it takes some time before Sean McPherson, a former cop, is pulled in. Can he save his fiancé and protect the other guests? Laurie Buchanan, who earned a PhD in Holistic Health with a emphasis in energy medicine from National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, O

Hello, this is Eric LeMay, a host on New Books in Literature, a channel on the New Books Network. Today I interview Kathleen Rooney about her new collection of poems, Where Are the Snows (Texas Review Press, 2022). The book takes its title from the famous refrain of François Villon's 15th Century poem "Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past." Like that poem, the book wonders, "Where are they?" as in "Where are the ones who came before us?"—the beautiful, the strong, the virtuous, all of them? In keeping with that long tradition, these poems offer a way to think about life's transience—its beauty, its absurdity, and of course its mortality. Allusive and associative, anti-capitalist, and unapologetically political, aligned somewhere between comedy and anger, this poetry juxtaposes the triumphs and tragedies (mostly tragedies) of our current age with those of history, and—by wondering "Where are they?"—explores the questions of where we are now and where we might be going. Join me in encountering the keen and brilli

After author Judith Berlowitz found both Gestapo and Soviet records about a relative named Klara Philpsborn, she began thinking about writing Home So Far Away (She Writes Press 2022). Set in diary form, the novel opens in 1925 with a visit from Berlin to an uncle living in Sevilla, Spain. "Onkle" Julius has not told his wife and children that he is Jewish, so his visiting family can only celebrate a quiet, hidden Passover, but Klara is intrigued by the language, food, and culture of Spain. A few years later, she takes a job as a chemist in Madrid. 1n 1936, when the Spanish Civil War breaks out, Klara, now Clara, enlists and ends up putting both relationships and her life at risk. Although she must hide her Jewish and communist identity in Spain, Clara is passionate about fighting for human rights and equality. The tale ends in 1938, just as the Nazi movement is picking up steam in Clara’s homeland. Los Angeles-born genealogist Judith Berlowitz fluttered through various career phases before settling on histori

Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in, among others, The New Yorker, Harper's, DoubleTake, Ploughshares, A Public Space, Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, and has been translated into many languages. "In the Gloaming," a story, was chosen by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of The Century and was made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse. Her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many anthologies. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Associate Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program. Books Recommended in this episode: Fellowship Point (Simon and Schuster, 2022) Alice Recommends: Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan Quartet Jean Stafford, The Catherine Wheel Willa Cath

A longtime Institute member, Katha Pollitt is an American poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. Her column for The Nation magazine, “Subject to Debate” won a National Magazine Award in 2003. In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, Pollitt talks about her 2007 book, Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories, a collection of personal essays. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Anu Kumar speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her essay “The Woman in the Well,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue. Anu talks about the vivid memories from childhood that inspired this essay about ghosts, fear, family dynamics, and violence against women in India. She also discusses the revision process for the essay, her interest in writing women’s untold stories, and her current writing projects. Anu Kumar’s most recent works are the novel The Hottest Summer in Years and the collection A Sense of Time and Other Stories. Her nonfiction work on the lives of early South Asians in America appears this year from Simon & Schuster India and Yoda Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Maine Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Numéro SANK, Past Ten,TheJuggernaut.com, Atlas and Alice, and elsewhere. She lives in New Jersey and has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. ­­Read Anu’s essay “The Woman in the Well” in The Common at thecommononline.org/the-woman-in-the-well. Follow Anu o

Today I talked to Mark Andryczyk, translator of Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2022). A mondegreen is something that is heard improperly by someone who then clings to that misinterpretation as fact. Fittingly, Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love explores the ways that memory and language construct our identity, and how we hold on to it no matter what. The novel tells the story of Haba Habinsky, a refugee from Ukraine’s Donbas region, who has escaped to the capital city of Kyiv at the onset of the Ukrainian–Russian war. His physical dislocation—and his subsequent willful adoption of the Ukrainian language—place the protagonist in a state of disorientation during which he is forced to challenge his convictions. Written in beautiful, experimental style, the novel shows how people—and cities—are capable of radical transformation and how this, in turn, affects their interpersonal relations and cultural identification. Taking on crucial t