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
How Not to Have an Awful Panel
From the pedant to the eulogist, here are four distinct personality types that are sure to derail your literary event. While we’re at it, here’s to hoping that none of these four individuals show up to your next marathon reading.
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Express Reading
Short stories will now be available in vending machines — i.e., the future of literature.
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The World According to Zadie
The first reviews of Zadie Smith‘s new collection of essays, Changing My Mind, are in and the general line’s a non-committal, guarded praise. I think it’s wunderkind jealousy, myself. Voici: The L.A Times review and The San Francisco Chronicle review.
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What’s Next? The KGB Bar Run By the Real KGB?
Over at Salon, Joel Whitney explains how The Paris Review worked with the CIA and “served, in part, as a covert international weapon of soft power.” While the possibility is certainly tantalizing, it’s necessary to read Whitney’s article alongside Carolyn Kellogg’s piece in the LA Times, which notes how “the threads of the article … become unsupportably tenuous” as it carries on.
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