Zadie Smith: Fashion Plate

Here are some more books coming our wayBack when I worked at the bookstore, Elizabeth Crane’s When the Messenger is Hot was one of the books my coworkers liked to evangelize about. Read “The Daves” and you’ll see why. Crane has a new collection of stories coming out in a couple of weeks called All This Heavenly Glory. Here’s one of the stories from the new collection, an amusing take on the personal ad which becomes much more impressive when you realize that the whole long piece is one sentence (unless you think using semi-colons is cheating). Three other reasons to like Elizabeth Crane: She lives in Chicago, the city I currently call home. She was interviewed in Tap: Chicago’s Bar Journal. She has a charming, unassuming blog called – for reasons I cannot discern – standby_bert.You may recognize the name Achmat Dangor because his novel of apartheid and its aftermath, Bitter Fruit, was shortlisted for a Booker Prize in 2004. Although the South African novelist missed out on any Booker boost his novel might have received here in the States, the book, which hits shelves soon, will likely garner some prominent reviews. In the meantime, here’s an interesting piece by Dangor about South African literature from the Guardian, and here’s a brief excerpt from Bitter Fruit.Alicia Erian’s debut collection of stories from 2001, The Brutal Language of Love was described as “seductive, erotic, smart and tartly humorous” by Publishers Weekly. Now Erian is returning with her first novel, Towelhead, a contemporary coming-of-age story about a half-Lebanese girl who moves to Texas to live with her strict father. The novel’s title comes from the epithet she hears from other residents of her less than enlightened suburb near Houston. A long – and very compelling – excerpt of the book is available here. And for a different taste of Erian’s writing, try this story from 2000 in the Barcelona Review.In 2002’s Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, Marc Estrin conjured up a second life for Kafka’s transmogrified protagonist. In his new novel, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Estrin wonders: what’s in a name? Saddled with an unfortunate surname, Arnold is at the mercy of preconceived notions and receives the attention of many unsavory characters. A brief excerpt is available here. Estrin also has a blog that is in its infancy.Look for more upcoming books in this space over the next few days.

The revelation of the so-called “Book of Judas” last week made for some good news stories. The newly discovered gospel claims that one of history’s oldest bad guys wasn’t so bad. It’s a provocative story and there’s an element of Indiana Jones to it all, as the lost text was found in Egypt and made its way to the public through years of intrigue and backchannel trading. Scholars, meanwhile, are already debating how relevant the document is. The New York Times article on the gospel gets into the scholarly debate somewhat, but an illuminating essay by David Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy explains why the “Gospel of Judas” is not a lost book from the Bible, but rather a Gnostic text. But what interests me most are not the theological ramifications of the find, but how its public unveiling is tied to the release of so many books (and a movie).First of all, it’s unlikely that this news would be of such interest were it not for the success of The Da Vinci Code, which has made once obscure Gnostic texts mainstream reads for fans of Dan Brown’s book. It’s also worth noting that The Da Vinci Code movie comes out soon, on May 19th, which is sure to keep early Christian mysticism in the news. But then there are the books themselves. National Geographic, which officially made the documents public, has two related books out now: The Gospel of Judas, which is an annotated translation of the original documents, and The Lost Gospel, which is about the discovery of the gospel and the research that went into deciphering it. The David Kopel essay cited above mentions an AP story in which James M. Robinson, a rival to the National Geographic scholars, explains why the find is probably not all that important. It turns out Robinson has his own book on the gospel coming out, too, The Secrets of Judas, which gives his view on the find.So, for something that was portrayed in the media as a stunning new find, this all seems to be very stage managed to me. The Gospel of Judas itself has been floating around since the 70s, but the three books (and the National Geographic TV special) all seem timed to hitch onto The Da Vinci Code’s next wave of publicity as Dan Brown emerges from his court proceedings and his best seller hits the big screen.