“In the morning, before we left, we presented my aunt with a gift from Indonesia, a package of luwak, one of four in Bon’s duffel. Civet coffee? she said, bemused. We were already savoring cups of coffee at her table, brewed in her coffee press from Arabica beans of her own supply.” An excerpt from Year in Reading alumnus Viet Thanh Nguyen’s forthcoming novel appears in the new issue of Ploughshares.
Commitments
Are Young Writers in Their Prime?
Sam Tanenhaus, musing about the New Yorker "young writers" list points out that, far from being a writer's formative years, many of the great classics in literary history were penned by writers in their 30s, or younger.
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Tar Pit Blues
Recommended Reading: Alexander Aciman on Canto 22 of Dante’s Inferno. (His essay is part of a series I’ve written about before.)
The Forgotten Forty
In a sea of Best Book lists, LitHub spoke to 40 booksellers about the most overlooked titles of 2017. On the list? Emil Ferris's My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, which was featured in Emily St. John Mandel's Year in Reading.
Back for More
Last week, I mentioned Look Who’s Back by Timur Vermes, which caused a stir in Germany with its tale of a time-hopping Hitler. Now, Daniel Torday reviews the book for the Times, judging it both for its historical research and its merits as a work of fiction. Sample quote: “The German public’s acceptance of the artist they think they’re watching provides a critique of pop culture. But it feels like bringing the Luftwaffe to a knife fight.”
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New Prize for French Literature
Albertine Books, the bookshop of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York City, is offering a $10,000 prize aimed at “introducing American readers to the best French-language novels that have been translated into English.” Among the nominees this year is Bardo or Not Bardo by Antoine Volodine, who was recently the subject of a Millions piece.
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On “America’s most misunderstood religion”
Recommended Reading: Walter Kirn’s “Confessions of an Ex-Mormon,” which has my vote for the best long form article on American religions since Lawrence Wright’s profile of Paul Haggis and the Church of Scientology.