It’s not a commonly held opinion, but Hilary Mantel thinks Henry VIII was a romantic. In a brief interview with Jamie Sharpe, the Wolf Hall author dispels the common view of the oft-married king as a philanderer. “He thought that he had to shape his life and shape his kingdom for each woman,” she says. “Men didn’t think that way in those days.” You could also read Damian Barr’s interview with her at The Millions.
Funny Ways of Showing It
And Thus Completes Our Robert A. Caro Coverage
Even if you read and watch all of these pieces about Robert A. Caro, it’ll still amount to only a fraction of the time necessary to read one of his books. So here goes: a typical Sunday for Mr. Caro; not one but two fake Caro Twitter accounts (plus a real one); Mr. Caro stops by The Daily Show; and The Passage of Power gets reviewed by us, NPR, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and The Wall Street Journal.
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“Paralysis of willpower”
Granta has a new series in which authors explain how they arrived at successful opening sentences. In the latest installment, Colombian author Héctor Abad links the brain chemistry that inspired him to write his chosen sentence with the chemistry that inspired him to fall in love with his wife.
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Time Traveling in Octavia Butler’s ‘Kindred’
Octavia E. Butler's Kindred remains a touchstone of speculative fiction for its innovative use of time travel to reckon with slavery in the antebellum South.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Ford; Satyal; Ko; Ferris; Paul; Koul; Ibrahim; Menkedick; Achebe
Out this week: Between Them by Richard Ford; No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal; The Leavers by Lisa Ko; The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris; My Life with Bob by Pamela Paul; One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul; Season of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim; Homing Instincts by Sarah Menkedick; and a new edition of Chinua Achebe’s African Trilogy. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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“A merry monarch, scandalous and poor”
John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, was a dear friend (even protégé) of King Charles II. He was also a sharp-tongued poet who called out the same King on his bedroom behavior: “His sceptre and prick are of a length; / And she may sway the one who plays with th’other.”
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Adichie Hints at Americanah Film
Now that we’ve casted the film adaptation of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, we’d like to turn your attention to Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Americanah, which may be involved in an upcoming collaboration with Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o. Adichie framed the possibility this way in a recent interview: “I’m going to do the mysterious thing and say that Lupita might be making an announcement very soon.”
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Seeing Beyond the Story
“When she began the cancer memoir, it was the fact of the writing, more than what was to be written, that mattered.” On Jenny Diski’s way of seeing beyond the story.
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