The Kindle edition of one of our Most Anticipated Books is on sale at $1.99. Our Man in Iraq, a novel by Robert Perišic, follows two Croatian cousins who manage to get caught up in the frenzy of the Iraq War. You can find out more in John Feffer’s interview with Perišic. (h/t Buzz Poole)
Out of the Frying Pan
Chris Adrian’s Take on Shakespeare
Chris Adrian's pedigree is impressive: former Harvard Divinity student; Iowa Writer's Workshop graduate; current fellow in UCSF's pediatric hematology/oncology department; lifelong fan of Shakespeare. He's also found time to appear in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and McSweeney's. Great Night, his latest novel, imaginatively reboots A Midsummer Night's Dream by setting it in San Francisco's Buena Vista Park. Here's some footage of him reading an excerpt at last month's FSG Reading Series.
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Not Letting Go
Caleb Crain, author of American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation discusses the mixed feelings that a writer is subject to when it's time to let go of a book.
Tuesday New Release Day: Wilson; Ackerman; Barry; Barkan; Krivak; Coe
Out this week: Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson; Dark at the Crossing by Eliot Ackerman; Days Without End by Sebastian Barry; Mexico by Josh Barkan; The Signal Flame by Andrew Krivak; and Number 11 by Jonathan Coe. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Poet Szymborska Dies
The Polish poet and Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska, who contributed to samizdat magazines before the fall of the Iron Curtain, died yesterday. Among her more popular collections is View with a Grain of Sand.
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Man Eater
Would you like your man-steak with green peppercorn sauce? At the LRB, Jenny Diski on Catalin Avramescu's Intellectual History of Cannibalism.
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Unruly Bodies on Medium
YiR alum Roxane Gay and Medium have collaborated on a magazine that will feature pieces throughout the month from 24 different writers. The writers all address the question "what does it mean to live in an unruly body?" and they range from Kiese Laymon to Keah Brown to Randa Jarrar.
Dictionary Don
He grew up in Edinburgh, wears sharp suits, and added the entry for "phat" to the Oxford English Dictionary. Meet the new editor in chief of the OED, Michael Proffitt. Tom Rachman profiles him at The New York Times.
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