An Iranian opposition leader said Gabriel García Márquez’s News of a Kidnapping accurately reflected his life under house arrest. As a result, the book is flying off the shelves in Tehran. But why do you think Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is so big in the UK?
Big Abroad
Jonathan Franzen New Yorker Article
Jonathan Franzen writes of Robinson Crusoe, solitude, and David Foster Wallace in his new article from The New Yorker – but you’ll have to like their Facebook page to read it.
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Wanderlit
As part of their Five Books series, The Browser interviews Colin Thubron, a travel writer from the UK (and author of a recent book on Tibet) who shares his favorite books from the genre.
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The Iron Man
Sasha Dugdale believes that Ted Hughes’s greatest contribution to the world of poetry remains Modern Poetry in Translation, the magazine which got its start thanks to an off-hand suggestion by Hughes at a cocktail party in the mid-sixties. Here’s our review of Jonathan Bate’s recent take on the poet, Ted Hughes: The Unauthorized Life.
20 Writers to Watch
Another response to The New Yorker‘s 20 under 40 list, this time from Dzanc Books. Dzanc polled “nearly 100 independent publishers, agents, editors, bloggers and reviewers” and went through two rounds of voting to come up with 20 Writers to Watch: An Alternate List.
“Nearly Useless”
What do Treasury secretary nominee Jack Lew and J. K. Rowling have in common? No one can read their signatures.
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