Our own Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel The Lola Quartet is out today. New Yorkers can see her (and some other Millions staffers) read on Sunday. Also out are Robert Caro’s latest installment of his LBJ biography, Nell Freudenberger’s The Newlyweds, Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, and Steve Coll’s oil industry exposé Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.
Tuesday New Release Day: Mandel, Caro, Freudenberger, Fountain, Bechdel, Coll
Donohgue and Cunningham at Symphony Space
In New York? Visit Symphony Space tonight (12/6) at 7:30 PM to see Emma Donoghue in conversation with author Michael Cunningham. Donoghue’s Year in Reading entry appeared here today.
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Obama on ‘Redeployment’
Recommended recommendations: President Obama recommends Year in Reading alum and National Book Award Winner Phil Klay‘s Redeployment.
Edan’s Story is The Standard
Our own Edan Lepucki’s “Ambulance of Boys” was one of the finalists in the Standard/Warby Short Story Contest. You can read check out all of the winners over here. (Edan’s is on page 8.)
Guess Who’s Coming to the Awards Dinner?
Percival Everett wins the Believer Book Award, for I Am Not Sidney Poitier: “a wickedly funny, stunningly imaginative, and wholly original book that addresses, head-on, sex, racism, religion, and wealth in America.”
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Making Connections
Books by Friends, a semi-regular feature at The Atlantic, sees writer James Fallows recommend the works of authors he knows. This week, he praises a book on the history of flight, a prediction for the economy and a jeremiad on American politics by Gary Hart. You could also read our own Kevin Hartnett on Fallows and American decline.
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Ultra-Unreal Reality
Does modern China need its own literary sub-genre? On trying to understand China’s “ultra-unreal” reality: “If Magic Realism was the way in which Latin American authors presented their view of their reality, then Ultra-Unreal Realism should be our name for the literature through which the Chinese regard their reality. The Chinese word ‘chaohuan’ (ultra-unreal) is something of a play on the word ‘mohuan’ (magic), as in ‘mohuan xianshizhuyi’ (magic realism)— ‘mohuan’ is ‘magical unreal,’ and ‘chaohuan’ is ‘surpassing the unreal.’”