Why All Americans Should Read “Celestial Bodies”

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 ]

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Book Review: ‘Wound,’ by Oksana Vasyakina

Oksana Vasyakina’s first novel is a family history and a reflection on womanhood. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2023-09-05 09:00:20 UTC ]
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A Trans Woman’s Shapeshifting Love Story

Aurora Mattia’s debut novel The Fifth Wound is a fantastical journey through the formulation of one trans woman’s truth. Mattia’s own recapitulation as protagonist Aurora aka @silicone_angel bridges the gap between ancient Greece, Covid-era Brooklyn, and the rolling fields of Iowa searching to... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-09-01 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Growing Up in a Chinese Restaurant in Atlantic City

Jane Wong’s memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a feast of a book. It’s about hunger—the hungers of the body, of addiction, of history. Brilliant, gutting, and funny, she writes with such range about growing up in her family’s Chinese restaurant in Atlantic City as their reach for the... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-08-31 11:00:00 UTC ]
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The Long, Winding, Booby-Trapped, and Occasionally Rewarding Road to Publication

The road to publication for my first novel was not only long and winding, but also booby-trapped, and in places there was no road, just long empty gaps that could only be filled by time. I started L.A. Breakdown as a junior at UC Santa Cruz, in 1972. I was old for a junior at […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-08-23 09:40:00 UTC ]
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Sex, Time, and Memory: Annie Ernaux’s Young Man, by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee

Sex, Time, and Memory: Annie Ernaux’s Young Man, by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee Book Reviews [email protected] Mon, 08/21/2023 - 15:04   The Young Man—forthcoming from Seven Stories in September 2023—is Annie Ernaux’s first novel in English... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2023-08-21 20:04:48 UTC ]
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Lessons and Carols for Recovery and Redemption

John West’s Lessons and Carols is a lyric memoir of recovery, parenting, loss, and hope, which is also periodically quite funny (ex. the first line of the first Lesson, “Caring for this baby has taught me new ways to resent.”) Hopscotching through time, the memoir shows us West’s first, early... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-08-18 11:00:00 UTC ]
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When Writing a Novel Bridges a Gap Between Mother and Daughter

I was deep in the throes of a slow-moving depression, feeling frustrated with a job I had held for seven years, and reeling from the disappointment of a first novel that debuted without the critical and commercial acclaim I was afraid to admit I desired. So I called my mother. “I think I need a […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-08-09 09:10:27 UTC ]
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“How To Care for a Human Girl” is the Novel for the Post-Roe Era 

Ashley Wurzbacher’s debut novel How To Care for a Human Girl jumps with both feet into the debate over reproductive rights. When two sisters find themselves pregnant not long after their mother’s death, Jada choses an abortion, while Maddie drifts into the sticky embrace of a crisis pregnancy... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-08-08 11:00:00 UTC ]
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An 'alpha vagina' gets top billing in YA star Elizabeth Acevedo's first (very) adult novel

Bestselling YA novelist Elizabeth Acevedo explains why 'Family Lore,' her first novel for adults, features sex, magic and an 'alpha vagina' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-07-31 13:00:02 UTC ]
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Secrets Live Inside My Son’s Ears

The Oracle by Joanna Pearson You name it, Lola’s found it in someone’s ear. A green Skittle, a watch battery, the tarnished back of a gold earring, a bunched-up bit of mint floss, a Lego head. Insects—yes, of course. Roaches of various sizes, a wasp, a small beetle. Hardened ear wax (cerumen,... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-07-31 11:05:00 UTC ]
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Read W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Sixty-nine (nice, but in Elvish) years ago this week, the godfather of high fantasy, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, published the first novel in a proposed thee-volume epic “largely concerned with hobbits.” The Fellowship of the Ring has, in the decades since publication, shifted over 150 million... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-07-28 16:55:39 UTC ]
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I Can’t Offer Up My Culture for Consumption

As I prepare for the paperback launch of my debut novel The Girls in Queens, I share with a group of writers and artists that I’m putting together a Book Club Kit. This has become a fairly common digital offering; a colorful PDF of brief insights from the author, a recipe or two related to... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-07-25 11:12:00 UTC ]
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7 Novels That Reveal Librarians Behind the Shelves

It isn’t unusual for libraries to feature prominently in novels; novelists, after all, are merely adult versions of the little people who fell in love with books at public libraries. But what of librarians? The keepers of the books, the ones who know you prefer romance, science fiction, or... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-07-20 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Book Review: ‘Counterweight,’ by Djuna

The pseudonymous South Korean author’s first novel to be translated into English pits a multinational conglomerate against life on earth. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2023-07-09 09:00:12 UTC ]
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By combining self-help and literature, the School of Life’s first novel does both a disservice | Alice Kemp-Habib

Billed as ‘a therapeutic novel’, the publisher’s first foray into fiction follows 29-year-old Anna’s mental health journey – with a view to helping the reader. But how useful can such clunky writing be?At 29 years old, Anna is full of self-loathing. She hates her job, her boyfriend is having an... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-07-07 15:45:50 UTC ]
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Exclusive Cover Reveal of Jennifer Croft’s “The Extinction of Irena Rey”

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover for Jennifer Croft’s The Extinction of Irena Rey, which will be published by Bloomsbury Publishing on March 5th 2024. Preorder the book here. From the Booker International Prize-winning translator and Guggenheim fiction fellow, a propulsive,... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-07-07 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Searching for Intimacy in the Gig Economy

Kathleen Cheng is having a hell of a Saturn Return. The late-20s protagonist of Jenny Xie’s debut novel Holding Pattern has just been dumped by the man she thought she’d spend her life with. Unmoored and questioning, she drops out of her cognitive psychology graduate program on the East Coast... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-07-05 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Mavis Cheek obituary

Author of a series of comic novels that focused on the tragi-comic nature of relationships and the general absurdities of lifeMavis Cheek, who has died aged 75, was the author of a series of comic novels that cast an acute eye on middle-class marriage and relationships and marked her out as one... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-07-04 16:07:50 UTC ]
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15 Small Press Books You Should Be Reading This Summer

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[ Electric Literature | 2023-06-30 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Rare Harry Potter bought for 30p may fetch up to £5,000

First edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone bought by UK book collector goes up for auction next weekIt is a book that has certainly lived up to its name: a rare edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone bought for 30p could fetch up to £5,000 at auction.The first novel... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-06-30 09:29:28 UTC ]
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