Valeria Luiselli has a new novel coming out, and BOMB has an exclusive excerpt. Titled “Hyperbolics,” it juxtaposes the goings-on at a church auction with descriptions of items on offer, which steadily grow macabre. You might want to check out her first novel after reading it to get some context.
Lot by Lot
Claudel Wins Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Philippe Claudel’s novel Brodeck’s Report has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The book was released in the U.S. as Brodeck and sounds mighty intriguing.
Pevear and Volokhonsky on Leskov
Granta talks to some translators of Russian literature about what they’re working on, and we learn that Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the first couple of Russian translation are working on a 600-page collection of stories by Nikolai Leskov, an underappreciated contemporary of Dostoevsky. Previously: The Millions interviews P&V.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Harbach, Hitchens, Tuck, Farah, Solomon, Barry, Krauss
A big haul of new books this week. At the top of the list is Chad Harbach’s much anticipated debut, The Art of Fielding. Also new this week: the new Christopher Hitchens collection Arguably, Lily Tuck’s I Married You for Happiness, Nuruddin Farah’s Crossbones, and Anna Solomon’s debut The Little Bride. Sebastian Barry’s Booker long-listed On Canaan’s Side is now available in the U.S. And Great House by Nicole Krauss is now out in paperback.
Tuesday New Release Day: Davis; Tillman; Matthiessen; Sharma; Neuman; Lazar; Keegan; Doyle; Graedon; Begley
Out this week: Can’t and Won’t by Lydia Davis; What Would Lynne Tillman Do by Lynne Tillman; In Paradise by the late Peter Matthiessen; Family Life by Akhil Sharma; Talking to Ourselves by Andrés Neuman; I Pity the Poor Immigrant by Zachary Lazar; The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan; The Plover by Adam Doyle; The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon; and a new biography of John Updike by Adam Begley.
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Election Heat Map: Book Edition
Amazon created an “Election Heat Map” to tally the number of “red” and “blue” books sold across the nation, and the count is updated hourly. The results are somewhat surprising to those who believe liberals read more than conservatives. (Perhaps liberals frequent more independent bookstores?) At the time of this writing, “red” books are favored by a margin of 7%.
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State of Terror
Junot Diaz, whose novel The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008, has been deemed “un-patriotic” and “anti-Dominican” by the Dominican Republic’s consul in New York City. Diaz had been working in Washington with Haitian-born writer Edwidge Danticat in the hopes of urging the U.S. government to take action against the abhorrent treatment of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic.
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