Can We Truly Be Free of Our Past? A Conversation with Wendy Chen, by Xixuan Collins Interviews [email protected] Mon, 04/29/2024 - 15:10 An epic family saga that spans over one hundred years and two countries, Wendy Chen’s powerful, lyrical debut, Their Divine Fires (Algonquin, forthcoming on May 7, 2024), is about history, love, passion, loyalty, betrayal, and our desire to be free of our past. In the novel, four generations of women survived the formidable hardship in China during the tumultuous twentieth century—the warlord melee, the Communist–Nationalist civil war, the Japanese invasion, and the Cultural Revolution—each emerging with unspeakable loss and heartache yet undampened spirit for life and the future. An intimate study of family relationships with the backdrop of a chaotic, changing world, this book provides a perspective on Chinese history rarely seen in American literature. Xixuan Collins: You capture the emotions of the four generations of Chinese and Chinese American women so vividly. You have said that you were inspired by your grandmother’s stories of her mother and uncles and the ways they fought, lived, and died for what they believed in. Can you tell us a little more about the story behind your story; that is, what was the moment when you realized you had a story to tell and you felt compelled to sit down and write this novel? Wendy Chen: My grandmother would always tell me stories of her family when I... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2024-04-29 20:10:46 UTC ]
While we don’t know what the state of the our pandemic society will be come September, we can at least be sure that we’ll all be getting a little Joy Williams, as a treat. Specifically, a new novel—her fifth, and her first since 2000’s The Quick and the Dead, which was a runner-up for the […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-03-03 21:01:23 UTC ]
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Ishiguro’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in 2017 is a delicate, haunting story, steeped in sorrow and hope. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-03-02 16:46:21 UTC ]
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The Books of Jacob, praised by the Nobel prize judges and winner of Poland’s prestigious Nike award, will be published in the UK in NovemberThe magnum opus of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk – a novel that has taken seven years to translate and has brought its author death threats in her native... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-02-26 15:00:18 UTC ]
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Faber is to publish Lucy Caldwell's first novel in nearly a decade, These Days. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-23 01:30:10 UTC ]
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READING PATRICIA LOCKWOOD’S first novel feels a lot like having your brain poisoned by the internet — or at least like having that particular contemporary condition understood. No One Is Talking About This is a searing entry into the rapidly emerging pantheon of digital culture literature, told... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021-02-16 16:00:53 UTC ]
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The Seventy-Five Pages, out next month, contains germinal versions of episodes developed in In Search of Lost Time and opens ‘the primitive Proustian crypt’For everyone who decided to bite the madeleine and read all 3,000-odd pages of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time during lockdown,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-02-16 15:21:36 UTC ]
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On October 5, this timeline will be blessed/cursed by Jonathan Franzen’s first novel since 2015: Crossroads, or, if you’re not abbreviating, Crossroads: A Novel: A Key to All Mythologies, Volume 1. It’s the first novel of a trilogy, A Key to All Mythologies, which, yes, nods to the doomed... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-10 17:59:29 UTC ]
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HarperNorth has snared its first fiction acquisition, a gritty gangland thriller by Karen Woods. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-08 01:06:27 UTC ]
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There’s so much contemporary fiction released every day, it’s hard to keep track—and it’s hard to know which works will still be remembered in a year and which will slip into obscurity. Luckily, we have George Saunders to guide us. In an interview with Los Angeles Review of Books, Saunders was... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-05 16:37:34 UTC ]
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Tired of the subtweets? The peevish reviews? The [gasp] indecorous email sign-offs? Do you wish the literary world would just conduct its brawls out in the open for all to see? Well, now you can fight along at home with Street Writer, Maxwell Neely-Cohen’s absolutely wonderful literary homage to... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-04 14:06:11 UTC ]
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How might a literary prize disrupt the literary prize culture? Perhaps by reversing the structure: announcing the winner first, then the shortlist, followed by the longlist – making it clear the most important aspect of a prize is its depth and breadth: building from one great book towards a... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-03 20:44:21 UTC ]
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To celebrate the Book Review’s 125th anniversary, we’re dipping into the archives to revisit our most thrilling, memorable and thought-provoking coverage. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-01-25 16:00:20 UTC ]
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LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH was the original kinky bastard. A 19th-century Viennese nobleman, he wrote the controversial 1870 novella Venus in Furs, which explored his fetish for pain and abasement, and inadvertently helped coin the term “masochism.” The Masochist, Slovenian poet Katja Perat’s... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021-01-19 18:00:58 UTC ]
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Virago is publishing the first novel in two decades from Gayl Jones, Palmares, set in 17th-century colonial Brazil on Portuguese plantations and in the last fugitive slave settlement. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-17 23:38:33 UTC ]
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Five prominent figures from the literary world discuss the vexed debates surrounding cultural appropriation, authenticity and the growing trend for sensitivity readers. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-15 06:28:34 UTC ]
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In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan are joined by author Jenny Offill and literary and film critic James Plath. First Offill shares her reaction to the insurrection and attempted coup at the Capitol last week, and discusses her latest... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-01-14 09:49:01 UTC ]
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Sarah Ferguson says historical tale Her Heart for a Compass is inspired by experiences in her own lifeThe Duchess of York has landed a book deal with the romantic fiction publisher Mills & Boon, revealing that she “drew on many parallels from my life” for the historical tale.Sarah... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-01-13 10:13:08 UTC ]
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I consider myself Argentine. I tell people it is not only part of my origin story but my identity. My first novel is titled Hades, Argentina, and to my friends I’m sure that seems fitting, the natural summation of my life and literary ambitions so far. But the truth is I had never been to […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-01-12 09:48:41 UTC ]
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Eley Williams’s first novel follows characters living in London more than a century apart who toil to compile the same ill-fated dictionary. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-01-05 10:00:02 UTC ]
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