“In Colombia, Mexico, Nigeria, Mozambique, it’s the real thing, not magic, and the only way to tell these stories.” Man Booker International Prize finalist Mia Couto discusses the label “magic realism,” the death of Cecil the lion, his new novel Confession of the Lioness – one of the most anticipated books of 2015, and post-civil war Mozambique. Pair with Philip Graham’s Millions essay on Couto’s fiction.
The Real Africa
You Are What You Read
“In another experiment, people who went through this ‘experience-taking’ process while reading about a character who was revealed to be of a different race or sexual orientation showed more favorable attitudes toward the other group and were less likely to stereotype.”
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Let’s Get a Move On, Scientists
David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years (which was brilliantly reviewed by Benjamin Kunkel in the LRB recently), wonders why the world doesn’t yet have any flying cars. It’s 2012, people!
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Here We Go, I Guess
Bret Easton Ellis was apparently serious when he said he wanted to adapt Fifty Shades of Grey for the big screen. He even has a cast and director in mind.
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Flying Mice
Seemingly from the realm of science fiction comes a recent announcement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Scientists there have succeeded in levitating mice.
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Artisans of the Bardic Breath
A couple weeks back, Jonathan Callahan published a crackerjack essay here on Volume 2 of Karl Ove Knausgaard‘s My Struggle. Little did we know that, even as he was writing it, he was being interviewed about his own literary debut, The Consummation of Dirk, by none other than…Rick Moody.
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“That’s some catch, that Catch-22”
Vanity Fair takes a closer look at Joseph Heller‘s tragicomic novel Catch-22. If you’re in NYC this August, you can supplement this reading with McNally Jackson’s “Ask Me About…” series.
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