Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi won the Man Booker International Prize this year for its beautifully rendered portrayal of a family’s tangled history in the village of al-Awafi in Oman. The novel was the first book translated from Arabic to win the prize, and more surprisingly, it was the first novel by an Omani woman […] The post Why All Americans Should Read “Celestial Bodies” appeared first on Electric Literature. Continue reading at 'Electric Literature'
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-26 11:59:00 UTC ]
Lit Hub is excited to announce the shortlist for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. This year’s judging panel included Tommy Orange, Emma Straub, Monique Truong, Maaza Mengiste, and Claire Messud. They are: De’Shawn Charles Winslow, In West Mills Chia-Chia Lin, The Unpassing Julia... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-09-26 13:59:29 UTC ]
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Today, Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell announced his next project: Utopia Avenue, which will be first full-length novel since 2014’s The Bone Clocks. (I suppose he has some time now that he’s done writing The Matrix 4.) Mitchell said in his announcement that the idea for the book came in part... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-09-26 12:40:53 UTC ]
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Due out next summer, the novel will explore the power of music, following the career of the eponymous psychedelic bandCloud Atlas author David Mitchell is to tackle the story of “the strangest British band you’ve never heard of” in his first novel for five years, Utopia Avenue.Announcing the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-09-26 10:42:58 UTC ]
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It is next to impossible to read every debut book that comes out in a single year. Even for me, a person who has dedicated the year to reading as many debuts as humanly possible and interviewing newly-published authors for my website Debutiful. Every month, my to-be-read pile grows larger and... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-24 11:00:28 UTC ]
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Pan Macmillan has landed the first novel in a historical crime fiction series from D V Bishop. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-09-20 00:24:27 UTC ]
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In his poignant and strikingly insightful novel of 1956, The Lonely Londoners, Samuel Selvon shapes his narrative through the eyes of Caribbean migrants (now commonly referred to as the Windrush generation) upon their arrival to London post-World War II. His Trinidadian characters, having been... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-12 11:00:55 UTC ]
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Within the first week it was published, Bassey Ikpi’s essay collection I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying, a collection of personal essays illuminating and encapsulating the experience of having mental illness, hit the New York Times bestseller list. What Ikpi depicts in I’m Telling the Truth... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-12 11:00:01 UTC ]
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I scoured the parenting and pregnancy sections in Barnes & Noble, but the only books I could find about pregnancy exclaimed about it happily. I moved on to memoir, fingers running over the bindings of book after book. Where are the ones for women like me? I wondered. Women who don’t know... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-10 11:00:05 UTC ]
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Back in May, I signed an embargo agreement on behalf of my bookstore stating that I would “ensure that [The Testaments by Margaret Atwood] is stored in a monitored and locked, secured area and not placed on the selling floor prior to the on-sale date.” The idea behind such agreements is that... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-09-06 11:00:49 UTC ]
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With 'Celestial Bodies,' the winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize, the novelist tells the story of three Omani sisters against the backdrop of a changing society. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-09-06 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Interviews Carolyne Larrington Audible’s new fiction podcast, Hag, launching August 29, features eight reimaginings of traditional British folktales by eight contemporary female writers, with folktales chosen from across the UK. The collection will be... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-08-30 14:21:50 UTC ]
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We’re back with our rejected book cover series, where designers walk us through the process and show us the book covers that could have been. (For previous entries in this series, see here and here.) What kind of planning and thought goes into the cover design process, and what beautiful art... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-30 11:00:07 UTC ]
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The small indie press boom is among us. In both 2017 and 2018, a whopping 40% or more of the National Book Awards longlists included titles from university and independent presses. It’s an exciting time for small presses— never before have there been so many diverse books in the mainstream... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-29 11:00:48 UTC ]
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My stove and I have been at odds for some time now. Beautiful and wasteful, it is the kind that is ubiquitous in Los Angeles kitchens of a certain vintage and which has chrome fins like a muscle car. And like those muscle cars, it is a gas guzzler. Aside from the standard four burners, […] The... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-29 11:00:20 UTC ]
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Ibram X. Kendi opens his latest book with his worst memory as a high school student competing in an oratorical contest. Having spent his short lifetime internalizing negative messages about Black people from Black people, from white people, and from the media and culture at large, Kendi... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-28 11:00:52 UTC ]
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In the popular imagination, the idea of Canadian literature is overwhelmingly dominated by imposing landscapes: the vast emptiness of the prairies, a cruel wilderness that tests the limits of human survival. It makes sense that such settings would loom large––many of the country’s most... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-26 11:00:08 UTC ]
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Tope Folarin’s debut novel is all at once a search for identity, an immigrant story, and a bildungsroman. A Particular Kind of Black Man follows Tunde Akintola, a Nigerian American in a small town in Utah. Torn between the culture of his Nigerian parents, and the white Mormon culture of Utah,... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-21 11:00:12 UTC ]
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When I first joined a workshop in 1994, American literary fiction was dominated by and continually lauded a “quiet” kind of writer, one often influenced by J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, or Raymond Carver. I loved literary fiction—I’d been reading, writing, and submitting it since high school.... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-16 11:00:22 UTC ]
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Regina Porter’s debut novel The Travelers includes short chapters, photos, and a compendium of voices—a full cast is listed in the front matter. This includes the Vincents, with patriarch “the man James” and his son Rufus; the Christies, headed by Eddie and Agnes with their daughters Claudia... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-05 11:00:57 UTC ]
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The Amazon review for my debut novel was glowing, including words like “compelling” and “fun.” And then there was this: “If you love historical fiction, you’ll love The Last Book Party.” Say what? How could my novel, which is set during the 1980s—a decade of my own youth—be historical fiction?... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-08-01 11:00:53 UTC ]
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